Most people associate ‘branding’ with colors, visuals, brand name and logo. However, there’s actually a lot more elements that create a memorable brand — all relying on user psychology.

In our research, we’ve found 10 most common and important brand elements. In this article, we’ll explore these elements, how they affect your branding, and best practices for you.

What are Brand Elements?

Brand elements are individual assets that when placed together, create your brand identity. They include both visual and non-visual aspects such as your logo, color palette, and slogans.

Other than the visuals, the most crucial elements for branding include:

Brand voice
Brand story
Brand identity
Mission and values
Brand positioning

All your brand assets determine how customers perceive your brand. In addition, strong branding can also give you a competitive edge.

The Importance of a Strong Brand

Brand elements aren’t the ones that design your brand visuals. When you organize them together, they design the way your brand is perceived.

Look closely and you’ll find that branding is always contextual. Depending on your elements, customers will create positive or negative associations with them.

Strong branding sets a positive tone, which can help you:

Stand out from your competitors
Develop loyal customers
Build an engaging audience
Generate word-of-mouth referrals

Brand identity is about the emotional, social, and relational impact among your customers. You need to think beyond the elements.

10 Elements to Build Your Brand Identity

Half of the most common and essential branding elements deal with visuals. The other half manages how your brand is perceived by customers.

Let’s explore the 10 elements that can make or break your branding strategy.

1. Color Palette

Color sets the personality of your brand. A good palette shows exactly what your brand’s tone is: warm, cool, bold, natural, or something else.

Choose your brand colors on the basis of the tone you want to reflect. For instance, a youthful brand would choose bright colors such as navy blue, orange, and bright red.

In addition, a color palette isn’t about the basics such as “blue” or “orange”. It is beyond the details with hex codes that ensure your brand’s colors stay consistent.

2. Typeface

Your brand’s typeface is the design style for branded materials and everything else. This includes your brand logo, your product labels, your website, and more.

There’s a difference between a typeface and a font, though. Typeface is the particular style of lettering such as Georgia and Times New Roman. A font, on the other hand, is the particular variation of that typeface that involves the size, weight, and formatting.

3. Logo

Brand logos catch the users’ eyes at first glance. It must be recognizable and memorable for your users.

You need to create a logo that’s simple and unique. It should clearly indicate your brand’s values and personality with your color palette. In addition, you can add your brand name and tagline to the logo.

4. Images and Visuals

Like your color palette and typeface, visuals and imagery can also reinforce your brand in terms of style and elements. There is a lot that you can ask yourself about it:

Does your brand feel better with illustrations or real images?
If you use illustrations, do you want them to be abstract or hyper-realistic?
If you use real images, do you want stylized or casual images?

Once you’ve chosen, you need to figure out the actual elements of the images. Could it be a specific character that appears repeatedly throughout your brand content? Make sure that your brand images align with your color palette too.

5. Presentation

The way you ‘present’ your app’s features or digital products really matters. It can remind customers of your brand with the visual branding.

You need to optimize your product pages and elements. Design every element, page layout, and the sizing for your audience, keeping your brand voice, typeface and color palette in mind.

6. Brand Voice

Brand voice defines the way your brand writes, talks, and speaks to your customers. It isn’t easy and more of an art than other brand elements.

Consider brands such as Duolingo as an example. The learning app can be best described as witty, bold, and irrelevant in its brand voice. It’s the way it speaks to its customers and competitors.

You can choose your brand voice depending on the way you want your brand to be perceived. For instance, finance apps would want to be trusted so a polished voice fits better. It depends entirely on your goal.

7. Brand Name

Your brand name is just as important as every other element. It represents your brand personality, company values, and what you offer. In most cases, you want to pick a name that closely represents your branding perspective.

If that isn’t possible, you can be creative to hint at another aspect. This could include your brand values, offers, or both in the name.

8. Taglines and Slogans

Taglines and slogans are another crucial element of a brand’s identity. A good tagline can communicate your brand’s values cleverly to your customers.

Here are some good examples:

Apple’s “Think Different” emphasizes on their premium positioning.
Kit Kat’s “Have a break, have a Kit Kat” reinforces what the brand offers.

Slogans should be memorable so that anyone can recognize your brand immediately with it. If possible, you can also create an ad jingle. They can set a tune in your customers’ minds, keeping your brand to the top.

9. Customer Service

Customer service could be a crucial element of your brand strategy, if you want. This means that your customer service has to be exceptional. Generally, you need to have a specific element in your service to stand out from other brands.

Find out what’s something that nobody else is offering but you could. Competitive research is essential for this brand element. If done right, your brand could drive more customers.

10. Mission and Values

If the audience resonates, mission and values can be a leading differentiator for some brands. You could lead your branding with:

The change your brand is bringing
The long-term ‘vision’ of the problem your brand solves

It is more about connecting with emotion than direct offers. If your brand is mission-oriented and competitors aren’t optimized, you could use your messaging to stand out from the rest.

Bottom Line

When you’re building a brand, your app should be just as refined. With Natively’s AI app builder, you can build an app with an excellent user experience, change your branding in a minute, and add new features — all by prompting.

It takes a few minutes to get an app’s first version, and an hour to get a polished version. Get started today and build your app by the next hour.