Corporate Identity Design

In recent years, hundreds of studies on corporate identity have confirmed what marketers have been saying for decades: a strong visual identity correlates with higher performance metrics for all types of businesses. (We’ll resist the temptation to say we told you so.) Through design excellence and the application of Lime’s Persuasion Science, we craft a corporate identity that strengthens consumer trust, raises brand image, and builds a competitive advantage for your business.

What is a corporate identity?

Corporate identity, sometimes referred to as brand visual identity, is a framework of rules or guidelines that determines how a business presents itself to the world at large and its target consumers in particular. These guidelines cover all aspects of a business’s appearance, which include:

• Logo
• Colour scheme
• Typography
• Product design
• Product packaging
• Store design
• Signage
• Merchandising
• Websites and webpages
• Emails
• Business stationery
• Sales presentations
• Brochures, catalogues and other marketing tools
• Advertisements
• Promotional giveaways

Typically, corporate identity guidelines are delivered in a brand style guide, sometimes also called a “brand book”, or corporate visual identity manual. This provides important dos and don’ts of how to use all the elements that comprise your brand’s communication – in other words, your brand’s “visual language”.

Your colleagues would probably find it very disconcerting if you suddenly turned up at work one day speaking with a foreign accent and dressed quite differently from normal. In much the same way, consumers subconsciously trust a brand less when it doesn’t speak the same language all the time. Your corporate identity manual developed by Lime will help your brand avoid precisely this problem, through detailed, easy-to-use guidelines on all the aspects listed above.

What are the benefits of corporate identity?

A well-designed corporate identity makes a business more recognisable and memorable to consumers. A study in the European Journal of Marketing that analysed 111 businesses around the world, found that:

• 96% of businesses correlated it with improved “stature and presence”
• 79% saw it improving their sales of products or services
• 72% linked it to improved competitiveness
• 64% stated it created an attractive environment and helped recruit talent
• 54% reported that it helped with raising capital

If you compare a business to a nation, its corporate identity is vaguely analogous to a national flag. You may come across a national flag in a variety of places: on government buildings, educational institutions, and hospitals; at conventions and parades; and as an ensign on cars, planes, and ships.

No matter where you see it, a nation’s flag looks exactly the same. The Australian national flag, for instance, always has the Union Flag with the three heraldic crosses in the upper left corner, the six stars at exactly the right places, all in exactly the same shades of blue, red, and white.

As a result of this precision, accuracy, and distinctiveness, people instantly recognise this as the Australian flag. Brands such as Apple, McDonald’s, and Qantas, have also earned this instantaneous recognition from consumers, owing to the steadfast application of well-designed corporate identities.

Here’s why it’s important to improve your business’s distinctiveness, recognisability and memorability:

• Consumers get confused if your business looks similar to some other business.
• If they can’t identify your business, they may not choose your business.
• If they can’t distinguish your brand, they won’t remember your brand, meaning you’re much more likely to lose them to competitors.
• Without a clear set of corporate identity guidelines in place, every web developer, graphic designer, printer, and office assistant you hire or contract, will treat your business’s communication design in their own arbitrary way, eroding your brand recognition and diluting the effect of your marketing dollars.

Why should I choose Lime to design my business’s corporate identity?

Thanks to our experience working with businesses of all sizes, in practically every industry, we design a corporate identity that serves the unique needs of your brand and category. Here are a few key benefits to having Lime on your side:

Holistic approach

Being a one-stop shop for all marketing communication needs – from logos, ads, and design audits, to websites and store signage — lets us stitch everything together, providing multiplicative benefits to your business. Our team’s hands-on experience with everything from web UX and UIs, to print production and retail design, allows us to deliver user-friendly brand guidelines that work.

Real-world testing

The main reason why many small and medium businesses fail to consistently apply their corporate identity is because most guidelines aren’t designed keeping in mind the real-world needs of SMEs: they’re generally too inflexible and unrealistic to use.

At Lime, we avoid such roadblocks by actually testing the corporate identity we develop on every foreseeable application, making sure it is as easy to implement as it is distinctive. What’s more, our guidelines are designed to be flexible, so that your brand can easily accommodate unforeseen requirements – and look good doing it.

Proudly Australian

Ever since Lime was founded in 2000, we’ve been based in Melbourne. Unlike many competitors, we don’t outsource work to low-quality overseas contractors, as we’d much rather keep things in Australia. For you, this means professional, reliable, on-time delivery.