What are brand identity elements? A marketing pro dives in

Picture the Starbucks siren logo. Now picture it in bright HubSpot orange. How wrong does that feel to you?

Like any brand identity, the Starbucks identity requires many elements working together to connect with you, the consumer. The siren graphic, the right shade of green, the logo’s round shape — you need everything to get the right effect (and to create one of the world’s most recognizable brands).

What brand elements create a compelling brand identity? And where can you go for a little help or inspiration to get you started? Let’s dive in.

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What are brand identity elements?

I think of “brand identity” as your brand’s personality — a presence that’s distinct and uniquely you. It’s an image conjured in the minds of your buyers, one you feed with regularity and consistency. These aspects of your brand — like your name, logo, and color choices — create a cohesive, recognizable image within your target audience.

Once you look for these brand elements, you’ll find them within nearly everything a company creates: social media photo filters, fonts on YouTube videos, sales decks, websites, and products. And removing any of these elements will make this brand feel wrong or off (like an orange Starbucks logo).

These details might feel overwhelming if you’re building your brand identity from scratch. Let’s walk through each of the most important elements, with examples and actionable tips.

Brand Identity Elements

1. Brand Purpose

Who are you to your audience? I find the best brand identities can answer that question with specificity and uniqueness. And your answer will guide how the rest of your brand identity development unfolds.

Review your value proposition, mission and vision statements, and values. Within those elements, pinpoint the pieces that spark emotions from your target audience.

For instance, The Farmer’s Dog is a specialty dog food company that started because one of its founders had a dog (Jada) who had stomach issues with processed dog food. He wanted a better way to feed Jada, and that desire ballooned into a billion-dollar company.

While I don’t use their service, I recognize that the desire to care for their pets runs deep in every Farmer’s Dog buyer. Love for dogs powers the heart of The Farmer’s Dog — and it’s obvious in every element of its brand identity.

Pro tip: If you need a little extra help figuring out who you are in your marketplace, check out these other HubSpot resources:

2. Brand Name

A brand name identifies your company and its products or services, distinguishing you from your competitors. It serves as one of the most obvious and memorable elements of your brand identity.

As you build customer trust, your name will represent that trust. That matters to buyers: According to the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer, trust remains a top-three purchase criterion for consumers. Lose it, and your brand name will lose it, too.

So, what’s in a good brand name? One piece of advice I have: Make it an easy one. Research shows that an easier-to-remember brand name has more staying power with consumers than something confusing. Maybe that seems self-evident — but then, ask Quibi how that went.

Pro tip: Consider your options within cultural and social contexts, as your brand or product names can go sideways otherwise. For example, I have a few items from IKEA around my house. But one I don’t have is the children’s desk delightfully named “FARTFULL.” What means “full speed” in Swedish doesn’t quite come across right in English.

3 . Logo

I bet you can identify and describe each of these brands:

Your brand logo is arguably the most important visual extension of your identity. It doesn’t just appear in ads or on your website — it may be on your physical products, in emails from salespeople, or on billboards along the highway.

Many brands hold a logomark (like the three examples above) as well as a wordmark, which includes the brand name. HubSpot, Spotify, and Transport for London all use elements of their logomark within their wordmark:

I’d advise you to design a logo that can carry over through changing market aesthetics (aka timelessness). Easier said than done, of course, but the best logos are ones that companies commit to for the long haul. Jaguar’s recent logo redesign and subsequent flop offer a potent reminder of a timeless logo’s place in buyers’ hearts.

Pro tip: Need help with your logo? Check out our free logo maker as a starting point.

4. Graphics and Images

Your overall visual identity makes a key first impression for your buyers. And that happens fast: people make their judgments of your website’s visual appearance in as few as 50 milliseconds. That’s about one frame in an average television show.

I won’t say you should fret endlessly over every image, but take the time to define and build a cohesive and consistent look wherever buyers see your brand. There are many ways to accomplish this. For instance, use the same filters on any Instagram posts to show you’re paying attention to consistency — and help your buyers know what to expect from you.

For inspiration, I’d look at Burger King’s style guide. It precisely defines BK’s values and interprets those verbally and visually.

The Burger King style guide lists its four design principles:

• Mouthwatering
• Big & bold
• Playfully irrelevant
• Proudly true

The guide interprets “big & bold” with clear, actionable instructions: “We play with scale using macro photography and a focus on details. Colors are unapologetically full and rich.”

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Let’s look at how that plays out on Burger King’s Instagram account:

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Burger King’s imagery plays on its burgers (and other food items) — it makes them centerpieces. Scan more fast food Instagram accounts, and you’ll find BK’s imagery differentiates it from competitors like McDonald’s or Wendy’s.

5. Shapes

A famous 1929 linguistic experiment asked participants to view two shapes and read two made-up words, “bouba” and “kiki.” They’re asked to assign the “word” to the correct shape:

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Across languages, cultures, and ages, people say the spiky shape is “kiki” and the splotchy rounded shape is “bouba” about 88% of the time.

The bouba/kiki effect shows how shapes factor into your brand’s visual identity (maybe more than you’d expect). Troy Stange, owner of brandpop, wrote on LinkedIn that “shapes are like the body language of your brand.”

Daniel Ocock, the managing director of Vie Design, says that he thinks of shapes as “the secret language of design; they say a lot without saying anything at all.” Ocock says that circles are “friendly and inclusive,” squares “scream reliability,” and triangles evoke excitement.

Buyers can remember the shapes fondly even after years or decades. For instance, I grew up a Nickelodeon kid and remember the “splat” logo used during my childhood:

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That shape and its variants are burned into my brain. I immediately connect it to pleasant childhood memories (and an unmet desire to get slimed).

The company abandoned it in 2009 for a more “minimalist” take, but actually resurrected its splat logo 14 years later during a major rebranding effort because of its meaningfulness.

6. Iconography

Icons are usually the smallest elements, but they can significantly impact how people perceive your professionalism. The right icons elevate your presence and add that bit of polish that makes for great first impressions.

If you’re undertaking icon development, I’d review current design trends and usability criteria. Things can change quickly, with yesterday’s sleek becoming today’s outdated.

For instance, when Apple released iOS 7 in 2013, it redesigned its app iconography from a skeuomorphic design to the flat, two-dimensional design used today.

Skeuomorphism adds texture and detail — illustrations of bookshelves might include wood grain effects, or an icon of a camera might have a 3D-looking lens.

But when Apple flattened its designs, the rest of the design world noticed. By now, you’ve likely acclimated to seeing flat iconography everywhere, so much so that skeuomorphism looks dated:

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Along with design considerations, consistent icons keep your brand identity intact across every channel and use case. For example, HubSpot’s Google Slides templates include three pages of icons permitted for use. Decks across the company stay consistent, and nobody is spending hours searching for suitable icons.

Pro tip: Wondering how to design fresh icons for your brand? Check out our icon design guide.

7. Color Scheme

Color communicates an incredible amount of information. The psychological components behind color choices are complex, and your choices dictate how people perceive your company.

For instance, my favorite color is red (and one I use often in my branding work). Red is a color of “passion, energy, and excitement” — but can also be “dangerous and defiant” in specific contexts.

In nature, the red bands on coral snakes warn would-be predators they’ll get a venomous bite if they try anything. Interestingly, that deep-seated psychology can show up in your brand identity, too.

Be thoughtful in your color choices, as you’ll infuse every part of your visual presence with your chosen color scheme. For example, esthetician Sean Garrette uses rich chocolate brown hues and complementary earth tones throughout his social media presence.

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Consumers can spot your brand once you’ve associated specific color palettes to your company’s presence, as you see the three palettes in the GIF below (each brand name is revealed after three seconds):

Pro tip: If you’re looking for the right color palette for you, try Khroma for AI-generated options. Give yourself some time to work on it, as Khroma’s algorithm requires at least 50 color choices on your part. You can also check out HubSpot’s free color palette generator, which will generate ideas based on info you provide about your brand.

An important note on color schemes: common accessibility guides — specifically WCAG 2 — denote color schemes that make browsing more accessible to people with disabilities. These guidelines are becoming critical must-follows, as accessibility lawsuits grow in number and scale. WhoCanUse.com is a great online tool to test your color palette for these accessibility standards.

8. Typography

Your brand’s typography is more than just a font selection. Typefaces, spacing, and sizing merge to create the look and feel of your text, and that interplay creates your unique appearance.

One element you’ve likely noticed is the use of serif or sans-serif fonts. A “serif” is a small decorative stroke usually appended on the ends of the letters. Many designers feel that serif fonts — much like skeuomorphic icons — are getting stale. That’s why sans-serif fonts are hot right now, and why it feels like every brand is shifting to them.

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It’s up to you what font type you like and where you’ll apply it (e.g., serif fonts for headings and sans-serif fonts for body copy). Regardless, choose a web-safe font or include one in your font stack as a fallback.

Browsers and devices universally recognize web-safe fonts. Although modern web design permits more font styles, it’s good to have a backup ready to give users a consistent experience across devices.

9. Brand Voice

Your “voice” is how you sound in your consumers’ mind when they engage with your brand. It gives volume and depth to your content and helps you shape your unique identity.

I find most brands define their voice using three or four descriptive adjectives: helpful, kind, playful, witty, analytical, factual, academic, or youthful, for instance. However, the trick with brand voice is knowing when to apply those sentiments to your touchpoints and how to tweak them to fit a channel’s specific needs.

For example, Burger King’s style guide defines the company’s voice as enthusiastic, confident, witty, and approachable. But the guide also notes that Burger King’s content creators “need to flex our voice a little for different situations: a little wittier here, a little more direct there.”

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Now imagine you’re a Burger King copywriter tasked to write two versions of an ad, one for an older audience and one for a Gen Z audience. Connecting with Gen Zers might need a crown or burger emoji — something you’d cut from content targeting more mature crowds.

As you build your brand identity, I recommend choosing four specific words that define your brand, like Burger King did. You can then tweak to fit your target audience, the type of ad, and other considerations while staying consistent with your core identity.

Pro tip: Visit my article on developing your brand voice for much more detail on the intricacies behind defining who you are and how you sound to your audience.

10. Slogan, Jingle, or Catchphrase

While B2B vendors might want a fun slogan to splash across their email signatures, I’ve found slogans, jingles, or catchphrases work best for B2C businesses. And even then, I’d use them judiciously.

Still, if you create something catchy, it can become one of your most memorable brand elements. Can you imagine these brands without their slogans or jingles?

• “Have It Your Way,” from Burger King
• “The Snack that Smiles Back,” Goldfish Crackers
• “America Runs On Dunkin,” from coffee company Dunkin’

• “Because You’re Worth It,” L’Oreal
• “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there,” from insurance company State Farm

• “Snap, Crackle, Pop!” from Rice Krispies

It doesn’t need to be complicated, either. I couldn’t stand these commercials when they aired, but I still catch myself saying, “Head-On: Apply Directly to the Forehead.” You probably don’t want to elicit annoyance from your target audience, but Head-On’s basic yet catchy slogan shows that finding your brand’s slogan could be a simple process.

11. Brand Guidelines and Application

An identity requires cohesion, and cohesion requires documentation and enforcement. Keeping your teams aligned to your identity isn’t as fun as designing logos, but it’s vital if you want buyers to connect more deeply with your brand.

I’ve shared brand style guide examples throughout this article that you can emulate. But the basic document should be a clear, written set of guidelines, including rules on using (or not using) logos, colors, and visuals, and practical dos and don’ts for real-world applications.

A written guide keeps your identity consistent across your touchpoints while giving your creators an approved sandbox to test and iterate.

Pro tip: Check out our brand guidelines template to start building your brand identity documentation.

Build Brand Elements Together

As you walk through this guide, I recommend you build your brand elements at or near the same time to each other. That proximity helps breed consistency in what your team produces. That’s vital, as your brand elements must work together. Your jingle won’t catch on if nobody can remember your brand name. Your logo won’t look professional if your colors don’t match.

Take the time early in your brand development process to plan these elements. You don’t need to have every answer immediately; I often find brands evolve, add, and drop elements when they don’t serve the brand’s purpose or needs. But use this guide and its resources to begin your brand identity foundation and get your elements in order.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in December 2021 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.