Visual elements are a major part of your business’s brand identity design. The keystone of that design is the logo, but in many cases, the logo isn’t enough to convey all of your brand attributes. A visual vocabulary is a way to reinforce and add to the messaging that is contained in your logo.
A company’s visual vocabulary consists of the secondary design elements that are
used in conjunction with your logo to form your brand identity. The visual
vocabulary is composed of font styles, colors, shapes, layout conventions,
backgrounds, photographic library, text treatments (such as taglines) and even the
type of paper you choose.
These elements should be used consistently throughout your stationery set and
marketing collateral and have the following 9 advantages over use of a logo and
text alone:
• The elements of your visual vocabulary become a graphic language, which takes
your viewer deeper into your graphics and materials. They add visual interest and
continue to tell your business’s story. They are another way that you can
communicate about your business with potential clients and prospects, aside from
the actual words and text about your business.
• Graphics in a visual vocabulary are a method of communication that’s more
quickly understood than text alone. A viewer can absorb the meanings of colors,
symbols, photos, shapes and even font types much more quickly than by reading
text. So, in cases where time is of the essence - when you’re marketing to busy
people, creating motion graphics such as animations or commercials or designing
items that people will quickly pass by, such as car graphics or billboards, this is an
important consideration.
• Many people have a deeper emotional connection with graphics than they do with
text. Customers will be more likely to form an emotional bond with your brand and
company if you use more graphics, as opposed to just using your logo and text on a
letterhead, business card, datasheet or brochure. Color and photography are two of
the most effective visual vocabulary elements to use to affect this emotional brand
connection.
• You can communicate some of the “personality factors” of your business through
your visual vocabulary. You can make your company look more professional or
people-oriented, more contemporary or traditional or communicate any of your
company’s values by varying the shapes, colors and fonts used as the surrounding
visual vocabulary. So, if you choose your vocabulary elements carefully, the story of
the personality of your company can be told through those elements.
• Using a visual vocabulary consistently throughout all of your corporate materials
will automatically make your materials look more coherent, credible and
professional, through the repetitive use of consistent elements.
• The right combination of visual vocabulary elements can also make your materials
more eye-catching. When your materials are in competition with others - in a stack
of proposals, on a table with other brochures or even a postcard coming out of a
crowded mailbox - they’ll have a better chance of getting noticed when they are
designed with stunning and unique visual vocabulary elements.
• Forty percent of viewers better remember visual elements. A visual vocabulary will
increase the memorability of your materials as well, since people will have more
visual elements to remember in your materials.
• Elements of the visual vocabulary can reinforce your logo to help quicken the
brand recognition building process. One common way that we do this is to use a
large version of the company’s logo, or a portion of the logo, as a watermark on the
letterhead, business card, envelope or website. Not only does this vocabulary
element effect add visual interest, but it will help to speed the time that it takes for
your potential customers and existing clients to recognize and remember your
brand.
• A visual vocabulary becomes a tool kit from which you can easily pull visual
elements to create new marketing materials. If you have a business card and
brochure and need to create a post card quickly, then many of your visual elements,
such as color scheme, font styles and even layout and photograph choices can be
pulled from the existing marketing materials and rearranged to create a new piece.
This is especially convenient when you have a short time or low budget to produce
new marketing materials.
The bonus function of a visual vocabulary is that when you’re doing a special
promotion, launching a new product or extending your services or product line, you
can vary elements of the visual vocabulary or even develop a new set of visual
vocabulary elements, to make the materials for your new promotion stand out.
While consistency throughout a campaign is important, the elements of your visual
vocabulary aren’t as set in stone as your logo. This is especially effective when you
work just with the colors and drawn elements and leave the text and tagline
treatments the same. That way, your materials will still be partially consistent with
your other company materials, but you can give your new product or promotion’s
materials a voice of its own.
Adding some visual vocabulary elements to your brand identity makes
communicating with your audience easier, quicker and more emotionally charged.
This gives you a highly effective way to increase your visibility and memorability.
When used correctly, they can increase your credibility as well. They even can help
add some personality to your brand identity and can make future marketing
materials easier to develop. And, unlike your company logo, you can modify the
visual vocabulary elements you use from time to time to spice up your business
communications.
About the Author
Erin Ferree, Founder and Lead Designer of elf design, is a brand identity and graphic
design expert. She has been helping small businesses grow with bold, clean and
effective logo and marketing material designs for over a decade. elf design offers
the comprehensive graphic and web design services of a large agency, with the one-
on-one, personalized attention of an independent design specialist. Erin works
closely in partnership with her clients to create designs that are visible, credible and
memorable - and that tell their unique business stories in a clear and consistent
way. For more information about elf design, please visit: Logo design at http://www.elf-design.com
