Visual Identity

“A visual identity is the visual aspect of branding that businesses create in order to evoke certain feelings and experiences with the brand.”

A company’s visual identity includes anything visual that their brand produces such as logo design, fonts, photos, and any other visuals that were used to communicate with the brand.  A company’s visual identity is part of the branding that communicates the overall message, values, and promise of the brand through anything that is visual.

Throughout the history of graphic design, graphic design was used as a way to communicate a message, or evoke a certain feeling, whether it is for political, or commercial purposes (e.g. advertisements). Building a visual identity for a company helps to differentiate itself from its competitors and easier for its customers to identify them. 

Paul Rand was an eminent twentieth-century American graphic designer and art director. He was the pioneer of iconic corporate logo designs for major firms, including IBM, ABC, Morningstar, Inc., NeXT Computer, Yale University, and Enron.

Paul Rand believed in good design to be the way of life that he changed his name from Peretz Rosenbaum to Paul Rand. One reason is to do away with his prominent Jewish identity to sound more American, the other to simplify his first and last name to four letters each.

He was dedicated to treating design as a function of businesses. By the 1950s, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) had established itself as one of the leading data processing companies in the world. Its president, Thomas Watson Jr, believed that Good Design is Good Business, and hired Paul Rand to do a complete overhaul of IBM’s graphic communications system. Over the next decade, Rand created what was perhaps the first design system for a corporate identity. From the company’s logo to letterheads, to product packaging, he made sure that every corporate asset had the company’s visual identity incorporated into it.

This then paved the way for businesses to see the importance of corporate visual identity as a function of their businesses, which continues even today.

Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv, a graphic design firm specialising in the development of trademarks and identity programs. Following Paul Rand’s approach to corporate identity,  they designed the visual identity of the companies that aligned to its values and products they are selling. 

Reflection

I think corporate identity is often overlooked or taken for granted nowadays as it is so common. Even small businesses like neighbourhood bubble tea shops (e.g. Sweet Talk – logo, colour, etc.) have their own branding and visual identity. Nowadays, it just comes naturally to us that a business should have its own corporate identity. I think that by knowing its history and the reason why it was created helps designers to understand the importance of their jobs and that it is not easy to do the job that they do.

Course Reflection

I think it has been a fulfilling 4 weeks, and I have definitely learned a lot about the history of graphic design. I have also grown an appreciation for the design practices and not take our learnings for granted as what we learn today is a result of what the people of the past have explored for many years! I think it is also hard to condense so many years of graphic design history (since the cave paintings) into a 1-hour lecture every week so I would like to thank Desmond for that. I also appreciate the weekly reflections as I get to understand deeper on topics that I am more interested in.

One thing that I think can enhance the learning of students is to not conduct the quizzes of the same lecture content on the same day. I think it will be better and fairer if we have more time (instead of a few minutes) to study for something that is graded.  

References

https://blog.jcimarketing.com/business-marketing/the-difference-between-visual-identity-and-branding

https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/paul-rand-5053.php

https://www.ceros.com/originals/paul-rand/