Designing Brand Identity: A Complete Guide to Creating, Building, and Maintaining Strong Brands [Hardcover]

Alina Wheeler (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0471213268 | ISBN-13: 978-0471213260 | Publication Date: January 15, 2003 | Edition: 1

From an interactive website to a business card, a brand must be recognizable, differentiated and help build customer loyalty. This indispensable resource presents brand identity fundamentals and a comprehensive dynamic process that help brands succeed. From researching the competition to translating the vision of the CEO to designing and implementing an integrated brand identity program, the meticulous development process is presented through a highly visible step by step approach in five phases: research and analysis, brand and identity strategy, brand identity design, brand identity applications and managing brandassets.

From global corporate mergers through entrepreneurial ventures and nonprofit institutions, twenty-two case studies portray the brand identity process in action. They illustrate a range of challenges and methodologies and represent a select group of branding and multidisciplinary design firms.

The scope of material includes history of identity design up to the latest information about online brand identity standards, naming and trademarking, with practical project management resources about decision making, and creating brand briefs.

Alina Wheeler specializes in brand identity. She uses her strategic imagination to help build brands, create new identities, and design integrated brand identity programs for Fortune 100 companies, entrepreneurial ventures, cities and foundations. Wheeler works closely with founders, CEO?s and senior management to insure that their vision and their brand identity are communicated clearly to accelerate the success of their organizations. She has been the principal of several design firms as well as a consultant to some of America?s largest business consulting groups. She is a former national board member of AIGA and was named an AIGA Fellow in 1998.

Hallmark Features

• Unlike most books that show identity programs, this book outlines a rigorous, complex and proven process from research and analysis through the design development of a new identity and online standards through launch and brand asset management.
• Comprehensive, easy to understand guide that is organized by spreads bysubject for easy reference.
• An indispensable reference for anyone with responsibility for brandidentity.
• Meaningful and actionable information that will accelerate the success ofany brand identity project.
• A toolkit for design firms and professionals, design students and designmanagers.
• Presents the relationship between effective brand identity and creating,building and managing successful brands.
• Presents case studies from Cingular, Amazon, Citibank, TAZO, Zoom, HarleyDavidson, FedEx and twenty others.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...anyone building or changing an identity should use this book for each stage. Smartly written, cleanly laid out, helpful examples...." (Brandchannel.com, June 2004)

"The book's easy style and comprehensive scope make it an appropriate choice for design students and professionals in need of a big-picture view of brand identity." (Design Issues, 4/1/2004)

"Written in a friendly and lucid style, it will be equally appealing to the account executive and the creative director." (uk.internet.com, 8 April 2003)

"Wheeler has created a voice, which is at the same time relaxed, authoritative, and informative. It's not a book necessarily read cover-to-cover: it's a very scanable book, organized by spreads. So it is easy to use- increasing its value as a reference book. And finally, the book is thoroughly visual- not just showing photographic examples of branding but employing charts and type layouts that use design to case the conveyance of information as well." (Communication Arts, May/June 2004)

From the Back Cover

The designer’s guide to building visionary brand identities

Designing Brand Identity is an essential toolkit for branding and design firms, marketing and design students, and clients. This comprehensive and accessible resource meticulously maps out the process, provides the fundamentals, and never loses sight of the big picture. From translating the vision of a CEO and conducting research, through designing a sustainable identity program and building online branding tools, this book helps companies create stronger brands.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (January 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471213268
• ISBN-13: 978-0471213260
• Product Dimensions: 10.9 x 8.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #637,046 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

118 of 129 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars It's about identity, but not about the brand process, October 20, 2003

By 

AJ Kandy (Montreal, Quebec Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Designing Brand Identity: A Complete Guide to Creating, Building, and Maintaining Strong Brands (Hardcover)

This *is* a great book when it comes to showing how to put together a coherent, soup-to-nuts identity program. But the title of the book is misleading - there's very little in this book about actually creating, building or maintaining strong brands per se. This wilfully confuses the logo for the company behind the logo. As Paul Rand once said of his logo for the ABC television network, it wasn't a matter of whether his logo lived up to the network, but whether the network lived up to the logo! The brand process involves a lot of non-graphical thought regarding the spirit or essence of what that organization is all about. "Is that an IBM thing to do?" The brand identity is, at best, only the surface expression: the brand is the idea of the company in its customers' minds. In that sense, creating and maintaining a strong brand is really about having clear direction, consistent policies and actions, and understanding that markets are conversations, not about whether the carpet matches the business cards and the Web site.

60 of 64 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The title of this book might mislead you, May 20, 2004

By 

"mromiti" (Sao Paulo, SP Brazil) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Designing Brand Identity: A Complete Guide to Creating, Building, and Maintaining Strong Brands (Hardcover)

When I put my hands on this book, I thought I would be adding one more point of view to my knowledge about brand identity, but this didn't quite happen.

This book isn't really about designing brand identity itself, but mostly about materializing brand identity into the visual identity of a company, limiting its whole concept. Furthermore, it is known that mere visual identity doesn't make a brand any stronger, as the title suggests.

Anybody with some previous brand identity knowledge in the marketing sense might get a little frustrated, had this person expected deep explanations about the creation of a brand identity plan (for that I would recommend Aaker's work).

On the other hand, if you are a designer willing to understand how to develop a visual identity linked to a brand identity, this book could be very useful.

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars almost a 5, January 5, 2005

By 

MVDM (Shanghai, PRC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Designing Brand Identity: A Complete Guide to Creating, Building, and Maintaining Strong Brands (Hardcover)

This could have been a 5star rating. The thing that held me from making it one is the print quality of the book. Honestly, I've got books half this price that are on better paper, and in full color. A book that is printed on two different types of (cheap) paper, and offers only 4 color pages just doesn't impress me. Not at this price. I felt dissapointed for sure.

Now, about the title: it could have been a better one. While it states "designing", it is more about "constructing" and "rationalizing". If you want a book that shows you how to design a logo/trademark, this is not it. The value of this book is that it will explain and deconstruct every single aspect about the total brand identity process, and how it can then apply. The later has visual examples - though as mentioned in extremely low quality bw print. But again: these visuals serve only to underscore the process.

If you need a book that will explain every process, theory and element of brand identity, click ad to shopping cart. It is an easy read, short and to the point paragraphs for us time (or attention spam) challenged people. It is a must-have and must-know for anyone in advertising, marketing or design, regardless of being creative.

If you want a book that depicts and demonstrates how a trademark has been thought of, worked out, presented, fine tuned, etc., this is not it.