brand-identity

# Brand Identity

Design or evaluate the visual artifacts that express a brand: logo system, color, typography, imagery, iconography, and motion. Stack-agnostic. Tool-agnostic.

This skill assumes a brand direction is already approved (positioning, mood, name). If not, run `brand-ideation` first.

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## When to use

- Designing a logo system
- Defining a brand color palette
- Choosing brand typography
- Developing iconography or illustration style
- Defining imagery direction (photography, illustration)
- Establishing motion principles
- Auditing an existing identity for cohesion or gaps

## When NOT to use

- Brand direction is not yet defined (use `brand-ideation`)
- Documenting a finished system (use `brand-style-guide`)
- Defining voice and tone (use `brand-voice`)
- Building UI components from an existing brand (use `design-standards` or `design-system`)

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## Required inputs

- The brand name and approved positioning
- The mood direction (from ideation, or supplied as references)
- Audience and category context
- Application contexts (web, print, packaging, motion - whatever applies)
- Constraints (parent brand requirements, regulatory marks, accessibility minimums)

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## The framework: 5 elements

A complete identity has five elements. Each element should reinforce the others. Inconsistency between them is the most common identity failure.

### 1. Logo system

Most brands need not one logo but a system of marks for different contexts.

**Components of a logo system:**

- **Primary mark.** The main logo. Used wherever there is room.
- **Wordmark.** Just the typography, no symbol. Used in tight horizontal contexts.
- **Symbol or glyph.** Just the symbol, no type. Used in app icons, favicons, social avatars.
- **Lockup variations.** Horizontal, stacked, square - whichever apply.
- **Monogram.** The initial(s) styled as a mark. Optional but useful for small contexts.

**Design principles:**

- **Legible at 16 pixels.** Test the logo at favicon size. If it falls apart, redesign.
- **Reproducible in single-color.** If the logo only works in full color, it cannot be screen-printed, embroidered, or rendered in browser favicons.
- **Distinctive silhouette.** Squint at it. Can you still tell what it is? If it looks like every other logo in the category at silhouette, redesign.
- **Construction grid.** Every curve and angle is intentional. Document the construction.

**Common failure:**
- Designing only the primary mark and discovering at launch that the wordmark, glyph, and small-size variants do not exist.

### 2. Color system

A color system is more than a palette. It is the rules for how color carries meaning.

**Components:**

- **Primary color.** The signature color most associated with the brand.
- **Secondary colors.** 1 to 3 supporting colors that extend the palette.
- **Neutrals.** The grays and tints that make up most of the surface area.
- **Semantic colors.** Success, warning, error, info - if the brand operates in product UI.
- **Accent colors.** Used sparingly for highlight and emphasis.

**Per color, document:**
- Hex, RGB, HSL, CMYK (if print is in scope), and Pantone (if brand-critical print exists)
- WCAG AA contrast against the other colors in the system
- Allowed and disallowed pairings (some brand colors look terrible together)
- Usage notes (when to use, when not to use)

**Design principles:**

- **Test for accessibility.** WCAG AA requires 4.5:1 contrast for normal text, 3:1 for large text. If the brand color cannot pass either against white, you have a problem.
- **Test for color blindness.** Around 8 percent of men have some form of color blindness. Critical UI signals should not rely on color alone.
- **Define neutrals carefully.** Neutrals are 80 percent of the surface area in most brand applications. They carry more weight than the brand color.
- **Limit the palette.** A 30-color palette is unmanageable. 5 to 8 carefully chosen colors beats a sprawling system.

### 3. Typography

Type is the second-most-recognizable element of a brand after the logo.

**Components of a type system:**

- **Display typeface.** For headlines and brand moments.
- **Body typeface.** For long-form reading. Often the same as display, sometimes different.
- **Monospace typeface** (if applicable for technical brands).
- **Type scale.** The set of sizes used across applications. Typically 5 to 8 steps.
- **Type weights and styles.** Which weights and italics are part of the system.

**Design principles:**

- **Pairing.** If using two typefaces, they must work together at body and display sizes. Common pattern: serif display + sans body, or geometric sans display + humanist sans body.
- **Web licensing.** Confirm web licensing covers expected pageviews. Some popular typefaces have prohibitive web licenses.
- **Variable fonts** are increasingly the right call for performance and flexibility.
- **Fallback stack.** Specify system fallbacks for when the brand font fails to load. The fallback should be visually similar.
- **Open-source alternatives.** Document open-source equivalents for situations where licensing is impractical (third-party tools, embedded contexts).

### 4. Imagery and illustration

Imagery direction is often underspecified, leading to brand drift over time.

**Photography direction:**

- **Subject matter.** What does the brand show?
- **Composition style.** Tight crops, wide environments, candid, posed?
- **Lighting.** Bright and natural, dramatic and directional, soft and diffused?
- **Color treatment.** True color, warm shifted, desaturated, high-contrast?
- **What to reject.** Stock photo aesthetics, specific cliches in the category.

**Illustration direction:**

- **Style.** Flat, dimensional, hand-drawn, geometric, abstract, representational?
- **Color use.** Full palette, restricted palette, brand colors only?
- **Line treatment.** Bold and outlined, soft and shaded, no outlines?
- **Subject matter.** What gets illustrated and what does not?

**Iconography:**