The Most Comprehensive Trend Report on the Visual Language of Brand Identity
Trends in the visual language of brand identity are driven by many factors from the ‘me-too-ism’ of designers and their clients mimicking the visual language of market leaders, to new and emerging trends such as ‘sustainability’ that draw a similar and en-mass visual response from designers all over the world. Over the past 12 months we have collected more than five thousand different brand expressions spanning almost every major industry and category of the western world.

Our 2010 Trend Report has been picked-up and re-published in blogs and marketing publications around the world – so by request we’re providing the report as one, complete pdf download (even if it is a whopping 6.8mb in size).

The brand expressions we tracked included existing, new and refined brand identities, product packaging, newspaper, magazine and billboard ads. The scale and breadth of these brand expressions allowed us to identify the major brand visual language trends of a broad range of market leaders for the last year. Whilst the majority of the examples presented in this report are recent, many trends are not in themselves new. It is our interpretation of the groundswell of take-up of a trend and the influence exerted within their market by the brands involved, that leads us to define the most compelling and influential trends.

What’s the value of a Trend Report?
All brands project an image through their visual language. It is up to each brand to make conscious and informed decisions about exactly what they wish their visual language to communicate relative to the competition and to their market’s perceptions.The report includes hundreds of examples of brands and their visual language to illustrate examples of brands who leverage trends to their advantage, as well as examples of those who follow trends to their disadvantage. The examples cross industries from fashion to food, from transport to telecommunications and everything in between, as well as markets from Australia to Asia, from Europe to the Middle East and the U.S.

Valuable Insights for all Owners and managers of Brands
An understanding and mastery of the trends in brand visual language will allow business to ‘tune’ their brand’s image to ensure they’re consistently communicating the right messages to the right people. For every organisation seeking to best manage their brand identity, these trends must be part of the consideration process. For each brand there will be advantages and disadvantages to leveraging the cues and meaning inherent in these trends. The big question you should be considering is this; ‘does the trend provide an opportunity to leverage a set of visual cues to communicate the perfect brand messages to your market, or has the trend become so widely adopted as to compromise the uniqueness of the brands who follow it?’

Click here to download a complete version of our 2010 Brand Visual Language Trend Report (6.8mb pdf file)

© 2010 Truly Deeply. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. We’re delighted for you to share, blog or publish extracts of our articles, on the condition that Storm Design & Brand DNA are properly credited (and linked to) as the source, and that you include either our URL: trulydeeply.com.au or the link to this source.

For further information, questions and enquires, feel free to contact us directly.

David Ansett, Brandamentalist
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Brand Designer and Trend Spotter.

Today it’s more critical than ever for businesses to differentiate themselves from their competitors and make memorable connections with their audience by creating unique, recognisable brands.

Colour in Brand Design
Every touch point of a brand plays a vital role in brand recall, but the brand mark is the heart and soul of a brand’s image. Whilst it’s the interplay between colour, typeface, and symbol that creates a brand mark, colour is registered by the brain before either images or typography. A University of Loyola, Maryland study recently found the correct use of colour could increase brand recognition by up to 80%.

Standing out from the crowd
As awareness of branding grows and more businesses invest in their brand’s identity, colour is becoming more important for companies looking to differentiate themselves visually. Consider the success of Heinz Green ketchup. In the first seven months following its introduction more than 10 million bottles were sold. The result was the highest sales increase in the brand’s history, all because of a simple color change. Apple introduced colourful iMacs into a marketplace where colour had not been seen before. The Apple brand was the first to say, “It doesn’t have to be beige”. The iMacs reinvigorated a brand that had suffered $1.8 billion of losses in two years.

A World of Colour
Colour also provides communication cues for brand attributes such as traditional or cutting edge, calm or excited, as well as cultural cues, cues about environmental credibility, cues about political affiliations and a plethora of other meanings. In the world of brand design, choice and use of colour provides the potential for a wealth of carefully crafted and powerfully communicated messages about your brand.

Recognisable Brands Test
Most of the most recognisable brands in the world rely on colour as a key factor in their instant recognition. Below are snapshots of twenty of the world’s most recognisable brand marks cropped to show a clear representation of their brand colours, but only a fraction of their logotype of symbol. Test yourself to see how many of the brands you can identify with colour being the primary visual driver.

The answers
01. Heineken
02. adidas
03. Toyota
04. British Airways
05. BP
06. Google
07. BMW
08. Vodafone
09. Ford
10. McDonald’s
11. Coca Cola
12. Olympic Games
13. Microsoft
14. IBM
15. Nike
16. Pepsi
17. GE
18. Qantas
19. Nokia
20. Virgin

So how’d you go?
18 or more correct: You’re brand obsessed (you’d fit in well around here)
15-17 correct: You’re pretty brand aware (and probably addicted to TV)
10-14 correct: Observation skills are not your strength – likely to leave home wearing different coloured socks
9 or less correct: You’re suffering brand avoidance – might be worth getting checked-out for colour blindness

If you’d like to talk to some people who spend way too much of their life eating, sleeping, thinking about the role of colour in developing a highly recognisable and unforgettable brand identity give us a call.

Cassandra Gill, Design Director.