What’s the Difference Between Logo Design & Branding?

Logo design and branding design are often used interchangeably, but are they really interchangeable?

Often when people think of branding, first they visualise a logo – McDonald’s golden arches, Chanel’s interlocking Cs or Spotify’s green circle, and then from that, they begin to recall the knowledge they have of the company behind that Logo – beliefs they support, memorable advert campaigns, even just really great (or terrible!) service they’ve experienced with that company, but really although the logo is core to the branding and to inspiring that connection, one is not the other.

When you design a logo, you are creating a signpost for your business, the marker that people remember and associate you with – but it is the simplest version of your business. Although it comes first, a logo only really achieves its potential once good branding is in place – the branding of a business is the company image as a whole – if a logo is your defining feature, good branding is the attitude you present yourself with and the great outfit you’re wearing to that important meeting.

When you are designing branding you are making decisions on the fonts you use, the definitive colours of your marketing/products and the ways in which these assets can be used to market you, including the logo. Outside of the brand identity, things get a lot more nuanced as the branding spans out into public opinion.

What we identify as the ‘Brand’ of a company is the public opinion – how does the target market view your company? Who are you appealing to? When the consumer sees that logo what associations do they have? In designing branding you are steering this as best you can using the media you promote yourself with and the personality you embody. Whether you’re a clothing company livetweeting the latest episode of Love Island or a supermarket creating adverts celebrating body positivity, the calculation behind appealing to your target market and how you do so is all part of creating that brand.

The culmination of these two very distinct parts – the logo design and the branding design, is what pulls together your company image into one, unified, recognisable identity and solidifies your business as one at the forefront of the minds of your consumers.