Branding for Beginners: The Difference Between Visual and Emotional Branding
If you’re just getting started on branding for your business, this may seem like a foreign language to you: Visual vs. emotional branding? If you’re not in our industry, it can definitely be confusing. Let’s demystify it and tackle this branding for beginners topic:
It’s important to understand the distinct roles that emotional and visual branding play when you’re crafting a brand for your business. Let’s break it down so you have the information you need before you hire branding professionals to help you determine how you’ll portray your business.
what’s visual branding?
Visual branding is the part of your branding that people see. It’s created by a graphic designer. The part that most often leaps to mind for people is a business’s logo. But there are (many) other visual branding products that make your business look professional, such as icons, patterns and graphics.
A lot goes into the visual resources created for you by a designer. They meet with you and research your industry so your look will be unique but not too far outside the box. They make sure it reflects your personality and that it fits your vision for your brand. All of this plus your emotional branding work drives their aesthetic choices.
what’s emotional branding?
Emotional branding is the process of finding the heart and soul of your brand. It’s what’s behind the final visuals.
At FFM, we work with clients on emotional branding and provide you with a document that captures all of this information in one place (pictured above).
Once the emotional branding is finished, our clients begin work with a graphic designer.
what do the different branding experts do?
Ideally, emotional and visual branding experts work together to create the entire vibe of your brand, from your target audience profile and industry research to your beautiful finished visuals. But what does each professional do? Here it is, broken down:
Your visual branding pro:
Is experienced in graphic design.
Uses digital tools such as Adobe Illustrator.
Has excellent artistic skills in their preferred modality.
Uses emotional branding and industry research to choose your brand colors and lettering.
Is experienced in logo and submark design.
Offers packages include icons, patterns and other supportive visual elements.
Creates products can support digital and print collateral.
Your emotional branding pro:
Is a marketing professional.
Studies target personas and helps you create yours.
Has story branding knowledge.
Uses an extensive questionnaire or branding session.
Asks targeted questions designed to discover the heart of your business.
Incorporates the mission, vision, values of your business.
Helps you discover and define your audience’s pain points.
who needs branding?
Whether your business is a one-person show or a 10,000-person team, every business needs branding work.
It takes an outsider’s perception, experience and support to create a visual that isn’t just nice to look at but that resonates with your customer and with your values simultaneously.
Because these are specialized skills, it’s almost impossible to craft a visual and emotional brand on your own. An emotional and visual branding team focuses on more than pretty visuals. They do the research to discover what connects.
who should do your branding?
Find professionals whose styles and approaches resonate with you. Look for an experienced designer who offers full branding packages so you won’t have to circle back and rebrand later. Look for an emotional branding expert who uses an extensive Q&A process so you can capture the full intent behind your brand from the get-go.
If you’re looking to learn more about the way I approach this, I’d love to chat! I partner with the amazing Kaitlin at Inside Out Brands for visual branding services - you can see what we offer in our branding work here. We’d love to help you create a stunning brand!
