How to build a brand people understand, remember and choose

Pictured above: Where the strategy becomes visible. This billboard for Affinity Designer unifies the visual identity, the typography, the brand’s voice and copy into a single, recognisable expression.

Part I – What branding is

Branding starts long before anything is designed. It begins the moment a business becomes conscious of the role it wants to play and the experience it hopes to create. Even without visuals, without a logo, without a slogan or a website, a brand is already taking shape in the choices a business makes about its purpose, its values, and the kind of relationship it wants with the people it serves. Design, messaging, and tone are simply the outward expression of that understanding.

A brand offers a structure that makes a business easier to interpret. It lets people understand what they’re stepping into, what it might feel like to work with you, and how a decision in your direction could change something for them. Strength grows when clarity is carried consistently. Clarity keeps a business from drifting every time a new idea arrives, and consistency reinforces that clarity until it becomes familiar. Over time, impressions and experiences settle into memory, and that memory becomes the reason someone returns without needing to compare every option again. That is when recognition becomes preference.

And the reach of a brand is not limited to the public-facing world. The same principles that guide communication with customers should guide communication with partners, suppliers, and the people who work inside the business every day. A brand that behaves one way in marketing and another way internally becomes unstable; the experience fractures. Integrity is what holds a brand together: the decision to apply the same standards everywhere, from the sales call to the packaging table, from the boardroom to the staff room. When purpose, tone and behaviour remain aligned across every direction (B2C, B2B, and in-house) the brand becomes something people trust instinctively rather than conditionally.

Part II – How to define a brand

Defining a brand is about creating alignment between intention, communication and lived experience. Below is the structure that brings that alignment into being.

1.

Purpose: why the brand exists

Begin with the role the business plays in someone’s life. Describe not only what you offer but the change you support. This does not need drama or poetry; it needs sincerity and direction. Purpose is the sentence that keeps you from wandering away from yourself.

A helpful starting line is:

We exist to help…
and the rest of the sentence should feel true, practical and human, something that would make sense to a customer.

To figure this out, ask yourself:

• What problem does the business reliably solve?
• What improvement or outcome does it create?
• What emotional state does the customer reach because of it?
• What identity does the customer want to step into?

2. Audience

People make decisions emotionally first, and logically second. To support that, understand the emotional conditions of choosing you:

• The moment they realise they need someone like you
• The hesitation that makes them pause
• The reassurance that would move them forward
• The feeling they want to claim by choosing you

A brand becomes relevant when it meets someone in the middle of that shift.

Brands often describe audiences as demographics: age, location, gender. But decisions are not made demographically, they are made emotionally. This is where practical insight matters: understanding what triggers the need, what slows the decision, and what creates reassurance. By focusing on context, not just profile, you build a brand that feels like an answer to something meaningful.

Practical exercises:

• Describe “the moment before” someone reaches for your brand. Describe “the moment after”.
• List three scenarios where your brand becomes relevant. Write what the customer is feeling in each. This becomes the emotional backbone of your messaging.

3. Positioning: your place in the market

Positioning gives the brand definition. It explains the circumstances in which you become the obvious choice. It is the difference between being available and being relevant. It removes the burden of competing everywhere by defining where you matter most.

A grounding prompt:

We become the right choice when someone is…
followed by the situation, feeling or need that aligns with your work.

Positioning is not a slogan but a direction. It allows every decision, from pricing to messaging to design, to point the same way.

• For whom are we the right choice?
• When do they need us?
• Why is our approach the most suitable in that moment?

4. Brand’s character and tone

Tone is the emotional texture of communication. It shapes how people feel while they engage with you. If clarity is the spine of the brand, tone is the nervous system; it carries the feeling through every interaction.

Choose a tone that holds the person well: firm or warm, calm or confident, spacious or energetic. Then, decide how that tone behaves when things are smooth, when things are uncertain, and when things demand care.

• How do we give instructions?
• How do we say no?
• How do we correct a misunderstanding?
• How do we celebrate progress?

Choose tone based on what reduces friction and builds trust. A financial advisor might need clarity and reassurance; a creative studio might need presence and ease; a wellness brand might need softness, steadiness and safety. Tone becomes a trust-building mechanism when it is carried consistently, not perfectly.

Practical output:
Write three example sentences (e.g. an email opening, a gentle correction, a celebration) that demonstrate this tone.

5. Visual system

When the strategy is clear, design finally has something to express. A visual identity is not decoration; it is semiotics: the use of shape, colour, rhythm and composition to communicate what we stand for without requiring explanation.

Instead of asking “what looks good?”, ask:

• What visuals express our purpose?
• What tone lives inside our typography?
• What elements reflects our personality?
• What imagery allows someone to recognise the brand by feeling, not just by logo?

A strong identity is one that feels inevitable in hindsight, as though it could not have been anything else. When identity works, people recognise the brand even when the logo isn’t visible.

To build this, define rules:

• When primary colours lead and when they support
• Which typefaces communicate structure vs. expression
• How layout and spacing shapes tone
• What emotions photography or illustration should reinforce
• When the logo enters and when it doesn’t

Practical output:
Create a one-page visual behaviours cheat sheet: basic rules that ensure recognisability on social, in print, on the website and in motion.

7. Bring it to life through behaviour

Behaviour is the bridge between expectation and experience. This is where customers build belief. And it’s often overlooked by small brands.

The visual identity may catch someone’s eye, but the behaviour of the brand determines whether they ever come back. Behaviour is the lived experience of the brand: the tone of your replies, the clarity of your onboarding, the way you handle confusion, the pressure you remove from decision-making, and the care people feel when things don’t go perfectly. Take the example of a restaurant: the food might be extraordinary, but if the waiter is dismissive, rushed, cold, or simply not paying attention, the experience breaks. You might remember the flavours, but you won’t return, because the emotional experience didn’t hold you. Whatever you deliver is only as strong as the way someone feels while receiving it.

Consider how you interact with clients and your staff:

• How you welcome
• How you reply
• How you onboard
• How you apologise
• How you celebrate
• How you say goodbye

Behaviour is where the brand becomes real, where trust is reinforced and where you prove that your message isn’t marketing language.

Practical output:
Write a short service ritual or communication standard, something that grounds the experience.

Part III – The output: your brand guidelines

At its core, documentation gives the brand one place to live. It doesn’t need to be a heavy brand bible or a glossy presentation, it can start as a single structured document. What matters is that the essential thinking is captured in a way that can be returned to, shared and used. A good set of guidelines includes four layers: why the brand exists, how it expresses itself, how it behaves, and how to keep it intact as it grows.

1. The Foundation: why we exist and who we serve

This section holds the clarity that makes every later decision easier:

• Purpose: the role the brand plays in someone’s life.
• Audience definition: not just demographics, but needs, triggers, and emotional logic.
• Positioning: the context in which the brand becomes the right choice.
• Promise: the outcome or feeling someone should reliably walk away with.

This is the compass. It prevents drift.

2. The Voice: how we speak

This section outlines:

• The emotional qualities the brand leads with (warmth, precision, calm, confidence).
• How that tone adapts across platforms without losing its centre.
• Sample phrases and “model sentences” that feel like the brand.
• What we do in moments of pressure: responding late, correcting misalignment, clarifying decisions.

This is especially important for anyone writing on the brand’s behalf.

Herman Miller brand guidelines overview

3. The Visual Language: how the brand is recognised

This is the design layer, but treated like communication, not decoration:

• Colour hierarchy: what leads, what supports, where accents belong.
• Typography roles: headline, body, emphasis, and when each has authority.
• Composition logic: space, structure, breathing room.
• Logo behaviour: how it enters, where it sits, what it never does.
• Imagery and mood: what feelings photography or illustration should reinforce.

4. Practical Application: how the brand moves

This is the part most guidelines forget, but the part that matters most on a daily basis:

• Social layouts: the grid, the rhythm, the ratio.
• Web behaviour: spacing, hierarchy, tone of navigation, clarity of CTAs.
• Print logic: margins, colour handling, finishing choices.
• Email tone and structure: openings, closings, clarity before urgency.
• Service ritual: the standards that shape the experience, not just the assets.

This turns the brand from theory into something you can use.

Mistakes to avoid

Mistake 1: Starting with visuals before meaning
Beginning with design when the strategy is unclear forces the identity to hold weight it was never meant to carry. The visual identity tries to behave like a strategy, and it cannot.

Mistake 2: Speaking to everyone
Generic messaging is inherently forgettable. People should be able to recognise themselves in your brand, or recognise that it isn’t for them. Both are useful.

Mistake 3: Reinventing too often
Frequent shifts break recognition. Recognition is the foundation of trust. Make sure to stay consistent, it might seem boring to you, but for your audience, it’s comfort and trust in a sea of messages.

Mistake 4: Copying the category
Category cues are important, but copying aesthetics erases difference. A brand can feel like it belongs without losing its individuality. The tension between familiarity and distinction is where strong identity lives.

Mistake 5: Treating behaviour as customer service
Behaviour is not a functional transaction; it is the delivery of the brand’s promise. Inconsistency here is the fastest way to dissolve trust.

Conclusion

When you clarify why you exist, who you support, when you matter, and how you behave, your brand stops competing for attention and starts earning recognition. The visuals become stronger, the messaging becomes easier to write, the customer experience becomes steadier, and growth stops feeling accidental. This is the real value of branding: not that people notice you, but that when the moment comes to choose, they don’t have to think very hard. And remember these key tips:

• Say less, mean more. Clarity is more powerful than volume.
• Design for recall, not novelty. Recognition happens before evaluation.
• Deliver what you promise. The brand is what people experience when no one is performing.

Once your brand is set, you can work on a communication strategy, learn more here.