Corporate identity: The difference between corporate identity and corporate design

Why do some companies have a strong personality while others remain in the shadows of anonymity? Does the secret of success lie in a well thought-out corporate identity or is it hidden in the important details of corporate design?

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So what are the two key terms corporate identity and corporate design all about? We'll explain what exactly they mean and why they should be clearly differentiated when formulating your corporate strategy.

What is corporate identity?

The term " corporate identity " is often confused with " corporate design ". Corporate design is only one of the four main components of corporate identity. A misunderstanding of these meanings can hinder a company's own positioning and brand development and therefore damage its overall success.

Corporate identity is made up of four key components that often overlap and complement each other to increase recognition in the marketplace and industry. It consists of the following concepts:

• Corporate design: it is an important part of the corporate identity and ensures the visual visibility of aspects of the company such as the brand, communication culture, products and services. I will go into this in more detail below.
• Corporate communication: This includes the channels through which a company communicates with its customers and partners. These can include websites, social media, print media, television and radio advertising. Corporate communication makes extensive use of corporate design elements that ensure corporate identity through communication.
• Corporate culture: This is created on the basis of the company's mission, vision, values and management principles. It should be taken into account when selecting the individual elements of corporate design, such as the logo, colors, images, icons, typography, visual language and layout. In combination with these elements, the corporate culture can have a significant psychological and emotional impact on the target group.
• Corporate behavior: It is expressed in the methods and quality of service and support provided to customers and partners. A close and well-thought-out symbiosis of corporate design, communication and behavior is the key to a successful corporate identity that makes a product appear unique and attractive on the market with similar parameters and gives the brand much more attention.

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What is corporate design?

Corporate design is one of the most important components of corporate identity. It serves to visualize the corporate identity as well as possible and make it recognizable in a split second. It is the colors and other visual aspects of companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi that make their products quickly recognizable on the shelves of many stores. And later, the corporate identity of these brands convinces customers to choose them by conveying additional benefits.

If you can apply the analogy of a tree trunk to corporate identity, the corporate design in this analogy is its branching branches with Blum, flowers or fruits that draw attention to the tree and distinguish it from others in the garden. Corporate design includes:

• Logo: Symbols or images that make it possible to identify a brand as quickly as possible among a multitude of other offerings. A good example are the logos of car brands such as Mercedes Benz, AUDI, VW and BMW.
• Typography: Fonts used by the company to convey text information and emphasize headlines. They should be as easy to read and understand as possible and convey the immediate character of the brand. There are even companies, such as Daimler, that have their own font.
• Color scheme: The colors of the design are the main carriers of the psychological and emotional impact that remains hidden. On a subconscious level, they inspire certain actions and create compositions that can captivate the viewer. Red, for example, is an attribute of dynamism and added emphasis, it charges and makes you act immediately. Blue, on the other hand, has a calming effect and is intended to create an aura of reliability. It tends to be perceived as serious and is suitable for legal, insurance or medical companies. Green brings us closer to nature and is associated with innovation and environmentally friendly solutions. Yellow, on the other hand, stimulates the appetite, which is why it is often used in the design of famous restaurants, cafés and eateries.
• Style: This refers to the images used to convey the corporate identity. It is not enough to just post photos of the company's activities. To make them stand out, you need to consider parameters such as composition, lighting, contrast and color background. Images should tell a certain story, convey a spirit, create cognitive connections and evoke certain emotions, lean towards the brand of the person depicted in them.
• Icons: Often, small icons can do much more than pompous statements and detailed images. They act as a kind of link between the company and its audience. They act as signposts, as doors to rooms with important information that should always be to hand. Studies have shown that attractive icons encourage clicks 40% of the time, driving organic traffic to websites, social media pages and other places with important information. Icons should be homogeneous in style and perhaps also style-defining for a company. A good example is the icons used by the care provider meckcura.de.
• Corporate template: This is a kind of grid in which users can see the information mentioned above. The correct structure and logical presentation of the information determines whether the audience gets to know the brand further. One of the main goals of the layout is to ensure consistency and recognizability. This is especially important when designing letterheads, business cards, brochures, posters and flyers, branded clothing, stationery and other promotional items.

Corporate design is a compilation of all these elements. It makes it much easier to design and implement such components of corporate identity as corporate communication, culture and behavior. The main task of corporate design is to ensure that the brand and the company are as individual as possible. So when you come into contact with a person for the first time, you can draw the right conclusion about their values based on the characteristics that define them.

What is important for corporate identity?

It's worth remembering that corporate design provides potential customers with a quick orientation and gives a superficial answer to the question of whether a particular company is right for them or not. But it is only one part of the corporate identity, albeit one that has a major impact on the other components and is the starting point for the development of the latter. Therefore, it is important to interpret these terms correctly and clearly differentiate them from each other in order to achieve a positive result.

Templates for creating a corporate identity: Why you should give pre-made solutions preference

Pre-made corporate identity templates , which you can download from TutKit.com, for example, contain a range of tools that you can use to create an attractive corporate design and integrate it with other corporate identity components. Thanks to their intuitive structure and full compatibility with programs such as Affinity Publisher, InDesign, CorelDRAW, PowerPoint, Photoshop and Word, these templates are easy to adapt to your own needs. Working with them requires no additional design knowledge or skills. All you have to do is select the right fonts and colors and insert the appropriate images. Ultimately, this approach saves time and resources. After all, only the development
of the corporate design by a branding agency can cost up to a five-figure sum.

In the case of the TutKit.com portal, all templates for the corporate identity were designed and developed by professional designers from the well-known German agency 4eck Media. They meet all the requirements and trends of today, so you can focus on other important aspects of your business.

Save your time and resources, choose ready-made corporate identity templates on TutKit.com and give your brand a unique advantage over your regional competition in the market.