Tap Into the Power of Recognition with Visual Consistency

How do you capture recognition for your brand?

When you’re in the car or on the bus and you pass a billboard for McDonald’s, you probably know it’s for McDonald’s before you even see the logo. You recognize the style of the photography, the font, and the way the image is composed. But how does your mind do that without seeing the actual brand—how do they do it? How do you, as a brand, capture that same kind of brand recognition?

The key is visual consistency—and a lot of brands get it really, really wrong.

Visual Consistency and How Our Minds Work

The human brain loves to look for things that it finds familiar, and it likes to establish patterns. 

On their blog, Percolate Industries breaks down the neuroscience behind visual processing and recognition:

The fusiform gyrus plays several key roles in human visual processing and recognition, including facial recognition and differentiating familiar objects from one another, like the difference between a cat and a dog. Certain neurons in this part of the brain also appear to be involved in our high-level recognition of words, numbers and colors...This part of the brain recognizes whether a logo and branding are new and unknown or something we’ve seen before. 

Percolate then highlights a 2013 Nielson study, which found that consumers are overwhelmingly more likely to buy a new product from a familiar brand than a new product from an entirely new brand.

In short, people trust the things they already recognize and, being visual creatures, the things we recognize are the things that look familiar. 

For a brand, that means ensuring that every space and place a person might come across your company—on social media, on your grocer’s shelf, or on a billboard—is tailor-made to trigger their brain and let them know, even before seeing a logo, it’s you.

Examples of Visual Consistency at Work

Though their new logo was roundly mocked when they first debuted it, Airbnb has managed to turn their much-maligned new look into a cohesive brand that’s highly recognizable. Using a typeface that matches the logo, colors, and photography styles which capture a kind of feeling about staying in a new place, Airbnb has managed to go minimal with their billboards around the world and still communicate to passers-by exactly whose ad they’re looking at. 

Another brand who’s done it really right is Beats by Dre. Not only is the logo recognizable—despite being exceptionally simple—the construction of the gear itself is unique, meaning every customer is a walking advertisement. 

And finally, there’s Starbucks, whose legendary brand book is exceptionally strict. That logo (they call it the Siren) can be altered in only a handful of ways, and both internal and external collateral can only use a few typefaces and colors. Any and all pieces of content also must adhere to a stringent approval process, ensuring that every single Starbucks-branded item you ever see is very on-brand. 

These are three good examples of how brands establish visual consistency across platforms. By sticking to a select number of colors, fonts, and identity points, they create cohesion between Twitter, Facebook, blog posts, and the real world—ensuring that customers can easily identify them and make purchasing choices based on that recognition. 

How You Can Use Visual Consistency

The most important way for a brand to use visual consistency is to ensure that their social media platforms and blogs are all using images that are branded and on-message. Ideally, each blog post would have an image or two that are, if not actively watermarked with your logo, at least similar. This makes it easier for readers to recognize them—particularly when sharing on Facebook, which provides an image and a snippet.

Then, make sure your social media platforms all look and feel like you; it’s much easier for a potential new Twitter follower to find your brand if the logo is very clearly yours and there’s no guesswork involved. 

Creating your own graphics for each engagement point can be time-consuming, particularly if you’re not a designer yourself. At efelle creative, we work tirelessly to help our clients create branding guidelines that are easy to adhere to, but provide maximum cohesion across platforms.

If you’re ready for a rebrand—or feel like it’s time to tighten your brand book—give us a call. 

Want Graphics? We’ve Got Graphics

efelle creative is a Seattle-based web marketing firm that specializes in website design and development, website content management, search engine optimization, and other online marketing services. Since 2005, efelle has worked with hundreds of businesses to help them with their web development needs. Call us at 206.384.4909 or fill out our online contact form to get in touch with a custom web design specialist.