Building a brand is more than just the a name, a logo, and t-shirtable colors. But those are the most visible elements and the ones likely to garner the most attention from a company’s executives.
As daily consumers of these high-visibility branding elements, we all lay claim to some level of expertise. That’s why selling the branding elements inside the company is sometimes the hardest part of brand development. (When we rebranded Maxim Integrated in 2012, we spent a year selling the brand inside the company before anyone outside saw it.)
I’ve written here about the challenge of naming products and companies. Here’s an episode of the podcast, 99% Invisible, “Making a Mark: Visual Identity with Tom Geismar,” that talks about the development of some of the world’s most iconic logos and what it took to make them happen.