Good branding is good business.

When you see a well designed brand identity, a cool logo, or a name that grabs your attention you know three things:

1. Their people care about their business.

2. They care about the impression that their brand makes.

3. If they care that much about their brand identity, they’re probably pretty good at what they do.

A logo is a symbol, a reflection of what a company is about. It’s an essential business tool that identifies and echoes an organization’s personality, culture, and standards. It stands as a visual reminder of a brand by giving an icon, color, or typographic shorthand to the world, but that’s not the half of it. A logo projects an image to everyone that encounters it. Some logos last for decades and are seen millions of times; online, offline, outdoors, indoors, in public, in private, even across generations. Logos may evolve to stay current, to represent new directions, or new leadership. But logos build long term equity and are at the forefront of brand perceptions.

The quality of a brand identity portrays how the people who work there feel about what they do. That means the leaders of the organization care about not only their product, but also their customers. It also means they care about the people that work there and how they feel about the business. Brand image and identity is often cited as a key factor in retaining talent since reputation is so important to the workforce.

Customers are acutely aware of branding and recognize quality when they see it. Everyone has awareness of the large multi-national brands but we’re all equally aware of small, local brands, too. From accountants to zookeepers, everyone has a brand identity. Architects, brewers, contractors, doctors, engineers, foundations, grocers, hospitals, insurers, you get the idea. Even cities and communities are branded, some better than others. Especially at the local level, the idea that a small business that cares about the impression that their brand makes speaks to how good they are at what they do. We can’t all be Apple or Nike but good branding can level the playing field in the minds of consumers.

Years ago the CEO of IBM, Tom Watson, said it well, “Good design is good business.” We couldn’t agree more, except to add that good branding is also good business. That’s what we love about our job. We get to design for people that want their brand to be the best. And also want the best for their brand.