Difference between a logo and visual identity: Which is better for your brand?

The logo is a deceptively simple tool, employing a combination of shapes, colors, symbols, and sometimes letters or words in a simple design that symbolizes the values, quality, and promise the company offers about its service or product.

Traditionally, a logo was used to register the origin of a person or object to highlight its value through its relationship with a prestigious place, family, or manufacturer.

There are different types of logos, the most notable are:

• Symbolic letter forms: where a letter is designed within a specific style to communicate a message
• Word marks: where the company name becomes the logo through the use of a unique font/typeface
• Badge mark: where the company name is connected to a pictorial element.

In contrast, visual identity or identity design identifies a brand beyond a logo, as it relates more to different elements that are basically composed of:

• Font exclusively made for the brand.
• Color.
• Logo.
• Image where a certain type of photography with a certain style must be done.
• Icons taking the logo and font as a reference.
• Application in visual spaces.

The designer, when creating the visual identity, does so in proportion and using the brand's basic elements so that the composition of these elements is called identity.

This raises the question, what is the difference between identity and branding?

At Brand Industry, we emphasize that identity remains only visual, whereas branding goes further; it involves devising the language you will use to speak to people, that is, the tone of voice the brand will use to speak to the public; how customer service will be, how I will receive them, what is the first thing they must see, the lighting, how the place will be, the smells, when you enter a store it has a specific smell.

Branding is the brand as a whole, how it will behave on social media, how it will address people, if I hold an event, how that event will be directed, so that it aligns with the identity. It is more globalized.

Therefore, building a branding strategy requires time and constant evolution according to experiences.

You can create an identity overnight and a new company, but you cannot create branding except over the years. You cannot position yourself in people's minds if there are no certain things/experiences that must be repeated for that brand to form. So that when the public sees the brand, they recognize it for its unique characteristics. Branding involves a longer process because it involves more elements that must be thought out and implemented for the public to react to them, but they also react because the company is seeking that reaction. Those elements that leave a mark on the mind, the designer manipulates them in a certain way so that they react as the company wants. All of this together is branding.

In conclusion, the logo is the first visual contact and can go unnoticed if it is not accompanied by a visual identity and branding, as all brands have a logo.