the primary brand mark used to be thought of as conceptually different from the rest of the brand identity. You'd see the market on letterheads, buildings, ads and packaging and ideally a good type face and color was chosen to complement the mark and carry that same personality design was considered the lipstick on a pig applied to the product right before it's sold to a customer. Today, businesses of all sizes are having conversations about design much earlier in the product pipeline and will even consider business decisions based on how brand perception might be affected. Graphic designers have responded to this holistic thinking by giving identities a stronger sense of brand D. N. A. Brand marks are now often thought of as the seat of a larger system of patterns, color composition or even motion graphics that all reflect a consistent personality. So in this identity for the Whitney Museum, you can see that they have designed a mark here on the left that has the word Mark Whitney in ...

the upper left hand side and then the W monogram sort of encloses it. But you can see on the right hand side that that W monogram is expressed in a lot of different ways. It's moved around. Some of the points are pushed and pulled. They make patterns out of it and they use it to enclose compositions. So what they've done here is they've created an identity system. They've taken the shape language and they have in fact taken the core symbol and they've actually just said that they're going to make that that in itself. The identity that in itself, the core of the brand. DNA. When IBM designed the branding behind their AI system Watson, they designed this sort of set of rings that exist here on the left hand side, with these sparks coming out of the top. And you can see there on the website on the right hand side, that they've taken those same shapes and they've kind of created this sort of background graphic that is made up of all these little dots. And so they're using that shape language throughout the entire brand, you can see it there again in an environmental graphics on the bottom, right hand side and then on the bottom left hand side, you can see it's even informing some architectural shapes. Dunkin donuts here is using a brand identity in a little bit of a different way. Their their identity is simply a word mark that says Duncan. But you can see that it changes based off of its usage. So on the talk up on the right hand side, it says Duncan and it's full. And then as the cup gets shorter, the word mark itself has to change. So in the past, this sort of thinking was totally unacceptable. Brand mark had to be completely sterile and on its own. But now we're sort of seeing the mark as this living breathing thing that can change based off of its application. This is primarily in response to the fact that we're seeing brands on totally different platforms, We're seeing them on small screens, we're seeing them on small products. And so we're gonna have to start thinking about marks in a lot of different ways because they have to be legible at smaller sizes. So you can see here when google rebranded, they have their word mark there on the left and then they have this sort of set of dots that appears when it's transitioning into the simple monogram that's on the right hand side, the G. And you can see that the G. And the word mark is just blue and the G on the right hand side contains all of their colors. So it's sort of combining the entire word mark into one simple shape. So this is what we're talking about when we're talking about identity systems along the way, try to think about how your designs might extend into a broader identity. Can the shapes you're using be turned into a pattern or stretched to create another graphic. Can the shape of your icon reflect the grid that you use for typographic layouts. These graphic tie ins can create visual interest and make an identity feel stronger and well thought out

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Mitchel Hunt

Expert freelance graphic designer; Worked with Nike, Fender and Oakley

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topics covered in this class

Branding Graphic Design Design Thinking Logo Design

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Muhammad Osama

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2,000+ classes ranging from fundamentals to advanced techniques.

Identity Systems

Identity Systems

Lesson Info

4. Identity Systems

Lessons

Getting Started

What Is A Symbol

Types of Brandmarks