I’ve never liked this word combination: Corporate Identity Design. It just always leads much too quickly into logos and letterheads and brand books and color palettes. I do like the word identity, though, but I’ve found that it’s completely hidden, submerged under the heavy layers of corporate needs and design necessities.
Identity? We need to free it first.
For a corporation to be able to capture its identity with good visual elements, it has to venture deep into the heart of a its own life-force, to discover its true essence. Identity is directly linked with the corporate’s dream, which expresses the core identity told in the story of the dream. At Dan Alexander & Co., we follow a methodology that exposes this dream, and lets it live boldly in the world.
We ask questions to let it emerge.
Inquiry into the identity of a brand will produce good answers that pave the way forward, but only if these answers are not blocked by some corporate mindset or design thinking. The questions have to be profound, and the answers must be instinctive. It has to surprise, and then defined. First, in words, then in specific content worlds from which it draws inspiration, and then lastly with shapes and colors that dress the identity visually. Then we finally have a corporate identity that is designed.
We base it on a solid truth.
This truth is the brand’s integrity, its purpose, which can only be the added value it brings to others. A corporate that defines its purpose, or vision, as “to be the leading / greatest / first” in its category, has not yet discovered its identity. It has to be charged with the tension of the dream, which explains why it does what it does in the first place. And that is always something impactful that touches others. That’s why people should care and even notice the brand.
We charge the identity with the power of impact.
Photo by Dan Alexander.
Beautiful insight, Thank you.
Insightful.