A fashion brand identity is a core component of any fashion label. Without it, the brand will not stay in the minds of its customers, leading to lack of engagement, little to no brand loyalty and possibly even reduced sales.
In the fashion industry, branding is everything. Consumers buy branded products to display that they identify with the brand and the connotations that the brand represents.
One popular example of this is Louis Vuitton. Louis Vuitton is a luxury brand, known for being high end and high quality. Its consumers buy products adorned with its name and logo just to symbolise that the luxury lifestyle is relatable to them, and of course to display that they benefit from a lifestyle themselves which allows them to be able to afford the products.
We can see this elsewhere in other areas of fashion. Footwear company Nike are such a behemoth because of their brand identity: Their footwear is of high quality with long lasting durability but it is their logo, the Nike swoosh, that makes them fashionable. The swoosh is instantly recognisable and anyone viewing it knows the brand and its values: High quality athleticism, power and fitness.
So when it comes to thinking about your own fashion label, after you have considered your USP, your concepts and your products, you must think about your logo and your brand identity. In this blog, we’ll give you an insight into how to create a fashion brand identity that will communicate your brand’s values to your customers, for you.
What is Brand Identity?
Succinctly defined, brand identity refers to the visible elements of a brand such as the colour, the design and the logo. These three elements should give the brand a uniqueness that is identifiable to its target audience, and that distinguishes it from other brands in the same space.
For example, Balmain and Calvin Klein are both luxury clothes retailers who predominantly feature their brand name on their products. But we bet that visually, you can already see the difference in those names, even though both brands simply use a font.
We know that Balmain is often in a larger, Roman looking font and its name is often accompanied by its founding city, Paris, whereas Calvin Klein’s font is narrower, more rounded and often shortened to their initials, CK.
Despite both brands not relying heavily on a colour scheme, we already know the difference between them simply through the variation in font shape and size. This is at its heart, brand identity.
However, more than that, brand identity is also made up of the values of your brand. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, was once quoted as saying that “your brand is what people say when you’re not in the room”, and he’s right. A brand identity is not only how your brand presents itself, but also what it stands for, such as its values, attributes or USPs.
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What goes into a brand identity?
This is the question that all budding fashion designers should ask themselves when they sit down to consider their own brand identity.
Whilst colour schemes, fonts, logo designs and other visual elements are important in the designing of an identity, just as important is the brands story, its values, and its attributes.
What we mean by those three things are what the brand stands for. Fashion entrepreneurs should ask themselves these three questions:
What will my brand be known for?
What does my brand stand for?
What is my brand’s point of view?
These characteristics could be simple: I want my brand to be known for its high quality sustainable products, I want my brand to stand for sustainability in the use of organic materials, and I want my brand’s point of view to be one of luxury but not at the expense of the environment.
Whatever the three components are, they must be reflected in your brand’s story and the choosing of colour schemes, logos and other visual elements must then reflect these values.
When these elements are combined with your visuals, then your brand adopts a brand identity that will communicate the purpose of the brand and its values for you. For example, “Oh you’re wearing {your brand identity}? Aren’t they the brand that produces eco-friendly luxury clothing?”
How to create your fashion brand identity
Although there is no official step-by-step process to creating a fashion brand identity, there are steps that budding fashion designers can take in order to begin to establish their identities.
Before they begin following those steps, their first order of business must be to sit down with themselves and ask the three questions we listed above. As well as this, they must consider the true reasons why a brand identity is so important. This provides a structure they can use to then identify ideas, themes and values that can begin to establish the uniqueness of the brand.
The following points must be considered:
A fashion brand identity differentiates my product line from competitors
A fashion brand identity gives my brand personality, and allows for connection with my customer
A fashion brand identity allows me to form relationships with my customers and cultivate brand loyalty
A fashion brand identity builds my credibility, and displays that my brand is not fast-fashion
A fashion brand identity defines what my brand is and why it exists
When all these points are considered, fashion brands can begin to realise why and where they differentiate from competitors. Ideas will form about colour schemes, messaging and even ideal customer types.
Once fashion brands have this information they can then:
Structure the brand strategy
A brand strategy is simply the above information collated into a much more concise plan, much like a business plan but for fashion labels. A brand strategy will commonly contain information such as:
The Brand Heart: Its purpose, mission, vision and values
The Brand Messaging: Its brand voice, its tone, its personality and its value proposition
The Brand Identity: A combination of the above elements as well as visual features such as a logo, colour scheme and typography or font selections
Having a comprehensive brand strategy will help transform ideas into fully fledged brand attributes.
2. Understand how the brand is perceived
Remember that half of the brand identity is visuals, and the other half is communication. Your brand identity is responsible for conveying how your brand will be perceived, whether as a luxury retailer, an economic retailer, a fairly priced retailer, etc.
Assess what messaging you want your brand to convey, and how you can tweak your identity to do that by analysing:
Your brands logo
Your brands messaging
Your brands personality
Your brands positioning
Your brands values
Collect this information through an audit or assessment, and then draft in fashion consultants, or friends, family, employees, partners or stakeholders to see if their outside perception of your brand aligns with all the things you’ve identified in your audit.
3. Know who you’re selling to
This is one of the most crucial aspects of any brand, business, or company. Who you’re selling to must align with what you’re selling.
For example, if your fashion brand is going to sell high quality clothing, the price mark-up is likely going to be expensive in order to cover materials and production costs. This means that you’ll be selling to a customer who falls in a particular salary bracket in order to afford your clothes.
Then you’ll need to go a little deeper than that. Now that you know their average salary, you need to decide on their demographic. Will you be targeting men, women, or unisex? Are you targeting distinguished, professional men and women, or are you targeting a younger generation who put more emphasis into labels and perceptions?
The answers to these questions will decide entirely how you market your brand identity. If you are targeting men who are above a certain age, your brand identity can’t speak to women who are much younger.
To create brand personas, imagine your ideal audience and ask a plethora of questions about them, such as the ones we’ve listed above. Make sure you gain insights into exactly who these people are, what they enjoy, what their lifestyle looks like and even what drives them.
You’ll also need to think beyond your ideal customers. Consider how a secondary or tertiary audience group might perceive your brand, because this information can be used to influence your design decisions. For example, a secondary audience may not be interested in purchasing your product but may assume your brand appeals to those with affluent lifestyles. You could then influence your designs to agree with their conceptions, further cementing your brand identity.
4. Design your visuals
Once you’ve delved deep into values, perceptions and ideas, it’s time to reflect those in your colour schemes, logo designs and typography choices.
The best way to do this is to begin by brainstorming word groups that accurately represent your brand. Try not to associate words with other words, keep them separate and explore which images come from each individual word.
What you’ll want to be achieving is the visualisation of those words. For example, “fast”. Try not to use other words, just visualise what fast means. Is it a cheetah? An engine? A tyre mark?
Concepts and elements will elicit the strongest emotional responses as they trigger mental imagery, so try to build your visuals around these.
Here are some quick tips for each aspect of your visual brainstorming:
Your Logo:
When creating your logo, identify your logo mark, its core shapes and complementary imagery.
Remember that the core imagery must be powerful enough to independently deliver your messaging without needing to fall back on your chosen colour scheme.
Your Colours:
A good colour palette should be clean, flexible and supply designers with an array of choices so that they can get creative, but not overwhelmed. A general rule of thumb is:
1 main colour
2 primary colours
3-5 complementary colours
2 accent colours
Your Typography:
For typography, try to keep it simple and avoid chasing quick trends. Your typography should reflect your logo, colour scheme and values, so for example choosing a gothic font if your brand value is optimism and enjoyment is probably a no-go.
Limit your number of font families to either 2 or 3. Generally this will include both primary and secondary brand typefaces for specific purposes, like body copy typeface or UI typeface.
5. Curate a brand identity style guide
Creating a brand identity is a lot of work. If you’ve identified your values, messaging, personality, plus designed your visuals in such a way that they replicate this, the worst thing that can happen is that your brand identity is just not used, or is misunderstood, when it comes to manufacturing or production.
Thankfully a brand style guide can prevent this from happening.
A brand style guide should be a document that includes everything about your brand identity. Make sure you include clear and easy to follow guidelines for all aspects of your identity, such as examples and use-cases.
Include practical details. When it comes to designing, there is no such thing as too much detail. A designer will benefit from having a plethora of information available to them so that they can successfully recreate your brand identity.
Make sure this style guide is distributed to designers and any team members, and update it frequently as your brand grows if any elements change or vary.
Following this quick guide is a sure way to ensure that you create a brand identity that is both unique, understandable and identifiable.
At James Hillman Consulting we regularly work with brands to establish a true brand identity. We take ideas, values, dreams, goals and personality into account to produce a brand that reflects exactly what the fashion brand needed to begin their journey. If you need to consult with us about your brand identity, don’t hesitate to book a call with James today.
