How to Create a Memorable Brand Identity in 2025

Did you know that 81% of consumers need to trust a brand to even consider buying from them? This means that your brand identity must be exceptional and easy to follow if you want your brand to thrive.

No matter if you’re a completely new or an established company, having a well-thought-out brand identity is mandatory. Without it, there is nothing that separates your company from others out there.

A brand identity not only helps you stand out from your competitors, but it also helps visitors and potential customers remember your brand as a whole.

While creating a brand identity might seem like a big and daunting project, the reality is that, with proper steps, it can be simple and fun.

Below we’ll go through everything related to brand identity that you need to know to create your own in a matter of days.

Want to change your brand identity but don’t know where to start? Let us help you.

What is a Brand Identity?

We can’t explain how to build a brand identity without explaining exactly what it is.

Your brand identity is a mix of different things. From how you communicate to your audience to what visuals and content visitors interact with. If you want the short answer, brand identity is your brand’s personality and how it should talk and behave wherever it’s in.

Brand identity isn’t tied exclusively to your website either. The way you talk and interact with visitors on your website should be the same on social media and email, for example.

If you want your branding to be successful, you need an exceptional brand identity.

Examples of Exceptional Brand Identities

Before we dive into how to make a brand identity from scratch, let’s quickly go over 5 influential companies with great brand identities.

1. Apple

Most people around the world instantly recognize Apple’s logo. Even an apple with a bite mark makes people remember about Apple as a brand.

While their products have changed over the years and they continue to innovate, one thing always stays the same. Their logo and their brand identity. Grab an ad from the 2000s and compare it to one from last year, and you’ll notice similarities.

Their unique branding ideas are one of the main reasons why they are as successful as they are.

Apple is an expert at showing that your brand can innovate year after year, but it doesn’t mean that your identity has to change with it, too.

2. Slack

Slack is a social media company that makes a platform for companies all over the world that want to facilitate communication between their workers.

Slack’s brand identity is casual and laid-back without being too casual. They want to let potential users know that they can use their service for serious work and to talk about anything with coworkers.

Being Microsoft Teams‘ biggest competitor, Slack needs a brand identity that helps visitors understand why they should pick it over any other alternative.

The results speak for themselves as they are constantly neck-and-neck with Microsoft Teams every year.

3. Coca-Cola

It’s hard to talk about brand identity without mentioning Coca-Cola. They are by far one of the most recognizable brands out there. As soon as you see a red can, the first thing that comes to mind is Coca-Cola.

They illustrate that brand identity doesn’t have to be complicated or intricate. In fact, their brand identity is simple and to the point. Their logo is a simple red background with a white cursive font. The way they talk on social media is consistent and always showcases how much they care about people’s happiness.

While you could say that their heritage and years of being around help them retain and gain new customers, they still have a fantastic brand identity.

4. Hydro Flask

You should know about Hydro Flask by now unless you haven’t been on social media for the past couple of years. They are a Gen Z-focused water bottle brand that nails its brand identity.

Their logo has changed throughout the years, but their current design is the perfect balance of minimalism and pop. They also have a very inspiring minimalist website that has a ton of interesting ideas that everyone should take note of.

But what makes them stand out from other water bottle brands? There are several reasons, but the main one is how customizable their flasks are. This isn’t something you find out by going to their products page and looking at the options. Instead, they show that you can customize your flask as much as possible.

This makes it that much more enticing for customers who want to customize and make their everyday items stand out.

This is not only a plus for the customer either. This is a plus for Hydro Flask as well since people will inevitably ask where someone got that flask.

Overall, Hydro Flask is a great example of what to do with your brand identity and how to stand out from the competition without being too over-the-top.

5. Patagonia

Patagonia is a well-known clothing brand that has been around for decades. They are famous for their unique brand identity. It inspires others and focuses on the planet’s wellbeing and sustainability.

While other brands talk about sustainability to a certain degree, they never make it a core part of their brand identity quite like Patagonia does. In fact, even their logo showcases how much they care for the planet.

They don’t ignore quality either. All of their products are of high quality without sacrificing anything, despite using only recycled materials.

People who care for the environment will always gravitate towards brands that are transparent and doing all they can to lessen their negative impact on the planet.

Patagonia has without a doubt one of the best brand strategies of this year and continues to show us that they can make it better.

How to Make Your Own Brand Identity

Creating a brand identity from scratch can seem like a long and complicated process that will take up hundreds of hours of your time. The reality is that while it can take a long time to create a good brand identity, it won’t take that long if you follow our steps.

In order to build a strong and effective brand identity, you have to understand what your brand is all about, what it does, and how it can interest people. If you can’t answer any of these, then there’s no point in creating a brand identity yet.

1. Analyze Your Audience and Competitors

The first step you want to do when creating your brand identity is to find out who you’re selling to. Do you know what type of audience your product targets? Do you have multiple customer personas set for your business?

Knowing who you’re marketing to and creating content for is important. Creating content and building a brand identity without knowing anything about your ideal customer is a waste of time.

That’s why we’re going to quickly guide you on what to do to find your ideal customer and how to set up customer personas.

Check Your Competitors

The first and most important step when analyzing who your ideal customer is checking what your competitors are doing for their own brand identity. Are they selling a comparable product or service to yours? If so, check how they write and create content. Is it in a professional and buttoned-up way, or is it casual and laid-back?

Check their visual content. Is it informative and information-packed, or snappy and to the point?

All of this information can help give you a bigger picture of whom you should be marketing to and in what way.

Quick note: While using competitor information is great, don’t take it as the end-all, be-all of your brand identity. You should never create a 1-to-1 copy of what your competitor is doing. Remember, you want to stand out from your competitors.

Create your Customer Persona

Once you have a good idea of who you’re marketing to, it’s time for you to create some customer personas. You must take your time with this crucial section for brand identity.

The first thing you want to do is establish broad information, such as:

• Name: Make sure you use an actual name. Don’t call her Jane Doe.

• Education: Do they have a bachelor’s? Did they drop out? Is it even relevant in your industry?

• Interests: What are the hobbies that they would have? Does your product serve any purpose in any of their activities?

• Job: Where do they work and what is their position? Is this a factor that explains their interest in your product or service?

• Language: Do they speak more than one language? Which ones?

• Location: Where do they live? Is the location important when it comes to your product or service?

• Buying motivations: Why would they buy your product or service? What does it solve in their life that they need it?

• Income: How much money do they earn each year?

• Relationship status: Do they have a partner, or are they single?

• Aspirations: Do they have anything they set as a goal for themselves?

Some of these questions might have you scratching your head and thinking, “Do we really need this much detail?” and the answer is yes! Information is king when it comes to customer personas.

When you’re using your customer persona as the target person (when creating content), you want to feel as if your customer persona is a real person.

Some marketers even go out of their way to add a headshot of themselves so it’s even easier to picture their customer persona. You can grab your information and give it to AI so it can create a generated image of how your ideal customer persona would look.

Explore how we increased AW-Lake’s website session duration by 262% with new branding.

Example of a Completed Customer Persona

• Name: Christopher Fisher

• Education: Went to college for economics and dropped out halfway through the career.

• Interests: Loves to play tennis on the weekends, spends time every day reading mindfulness books, and religiously goes to the gym.

• Job: Journalist

• Language: He speaks Portuguese natively but also knows English very well.

• Location: Fort Lauderdale, Florida

• Buying Motivation: Wants a custom website for his newly created brand so he can receive orders online.

• Income: $75,000 per year

• Relationship Status: Married and has two children.

• Aspirations: Wants to get his business all over the United States, with branches in every major city.

This is just one customer persona. Ideally, you want to create a customer persona for each specific product you develop. Not all companies create products and services for the same customer. So why would you use only one customer persona?

2. Create Your Value Proposition and Understand Your Mission

Now that you have analyzed your competitors and created a customer persona, we can now move on to your value proposition and your mission.

No brand identity is ready without knowing why you are selling your product or service and what makes your business stand out from the competition.

Value Proposition

What do you offer that is different from all the other companies with similar products to yours? Is there anything that a potential customer should know about first?

This is where analyzing your competitors comes in handy. By knowing exactly what they sell, you can leverage features your product has that theirs doesn’t.

Check all the notes you took on your competitors and start from there.

Mission

Knowing your value proposition is great, but what about what your business wants to achieve as a whole? No, “selling more” is not a mission statement. We’re talking about what mission drives your brand and makes you want to innovate and push new products and services out.

Learn what your brand purpose is. We can’t tell you exactly what it is because each brand has its own mission statement. It’s nearly impossible to create a proper brand identity if you don’t have a well-thought-out mission statement.

Similar to your value proposition, your mission statement will help you stand out even more from your competitors and other brands in your industry.

3. Customize Your Design and Make Guidelines

Now that you have the core of your brand identity settled, it’s time to create the visual and written guidelines for your business.

There are several important aspects to consider design-wise when talking about brand identity. So let’s get started.

Colors

Knowing what colors you’re going to use for your brand is vital. You don’t want to use colors that might not represent what your brand stands for. While this might sound exaggerated, the reality is that creating colors plays a big role in how people perceive brands as a whole.

In fact, we wrote an article about the psychology of colors and what each color represents, emotion-wise.

Knowing what colors you are going to use is especially important for the next section.

Logo

Everyone is focused on this part of the brand identity the most, and for good reason. Having a good and memorable logo is a must if you want to thrive.

When creating your logo, don’t overcomplicate it and make it hard to understand. Instead, try to make it simple and easy to remember. You want people to instantly recognize your brand when they see it anywhere.

While we highly recommend you find a professional graphic designer for logo creation, you could do it yourself if you feel confident enough in your design skills.

Font

Picking a font is simple and shouldn’t take too long as long as you’re not looking for a custom font for your brand.

A good rule of thumb when picking fonts is to choose one that looks good in all caps in case you need to use it for certain areas on your website.

Another basic but important rule is to make sure that the font you pick is easy to read. While we encourage you to find an interesting font that matches the style of your brand. We don’t suggest you use a font that is too complex and that might be hard to read from afar.

Adding personal touches to your font is fine as long as your potential customers can read what it says without having to squint their eyes.

Having a solid font that anyone can easily read is one of the most essential web features you’ll ever have.

Make Sure It’s Consistent

When talking about brand identity, you want to make sure that it looks and feels the same no matter where the visitor looks. This isn’t just for your website. When we mention consistency, we mean everywhere.

How you interact on social media with other accounts, how your email signature looks, what all of your brand’s social media profiles look like. Every area that has your brand on it should be consistent with your brand identity.

Create Guidelines or a Style Guide

Creating a document that lets everyone in your company know what to do and what not to do when it comes to creating content for the brand is very important.

While you might know the ins and outs of your brand identity after making it from scratch, most workers in your company won’t. This means that having a document that explains everything in an easy-to-follow format is great.

Not only will you save yourself the hassle of checking everything your brand posts, but you will also make your brand identity consistent no matter what.

If you have the time, you could create both a style guide for your brand’s graphic designers and a guideline book for everything else.

Make sure to go into detail for both.

How do you want to speak to customers on social media? Should it be casual or professional? How should it be for emails?

Get into the nitty-gritty and leave no questions unanswered.

Learn how we increased Arc of Northern Virginia’s returning website users by 32% with a complete brand rework.

4. Biggest Brand Identity Mistakes

Now that you have your brand identity set, let’s quickly go through some mistakes we see all the time when reviewing brand identities from clients.

Blatantly Copied a Competitor

We mentioned this before, but we’ll mention it again. You should never copy a competitor’s brand identity 1 for 1. While it’s fine to take inspiration from their ideas and values, going out of your way to copy and paste their hard work isn’t.

You want to use the information you learn from your competitors to your advantage, but never copy what they do. How are you planning to stand out if you just copy their whole strategy and identity?

Check for Consistent Messaging

A vital part of brand identity is making sure that everything you say to your customers is direct and easy to interpret. Don’t try to publish a complex idea without other people reviewing it first.

While it might make perfect sense to you, it doesn’t mean it will be the same for your customers who know nothing about it.

5. Let Other People Review It

After hours and hours of hard work, you finally finished your company’s brand identity. That means you can instantly publish it and use it, right?

Not quite. While it might seem perfect to you after hours of work, it might not be the case from an outsider’s point of view.

Ask for feedback from coworkers and friends, and ask them if the brand identity you created makes sense for your brand.

Make sure to take note of what they say and consider making changes if you hear the same feedback over and over from different people.

Get a Custom Brand Identity That Stands Out and Converts With Blacksmith

After going through this article, you might have noticed how much work goes into creating a proper brand identity that isn’t only unique but also converts visitors into clients.

It’s not an easy process, especially if you have no background in graphic design. So what now?

That’s where we come in. Here at Blacksmith, we’re experts in creating branding strategies that increase engagement and provide you with the conversion rates that your brand deserves.

As a full-service branding agency, we have a group of seasoned graphic designers ready to apply all the latest ideas and strategies to your brand identity. This way, you can stand out from the competition while also providing the most value to your clients possible.

Still unsure if investing in a new brand identity is a good idea for your brand? Don’t worry; click here to schedule a call so we can audit your website. This way, we can show you what areas could be improved with a new and reworked brand identity.