Brand identity vs visual identity for founders

Transcript

AI has made decent design abundant, which means decent design is becoming almost invisible, or at least much less memorable. So this year, it seeks to help you as a founder build a foundation of a tasteful brand. But before we get going, there's a very important distinction we need to make. Brand identity versus visual identity. Your brand identity is what people eventually learn about you. Your reputation, your promise, your voice, how you make them feel. It's not what you say it is, but what they say it is. Marty calls it a gut feeling, and you earn that over years. So anyone telling you they built a brand in one hour with love art or Higgs Field are technically wrong. They built a visual identity. And a visual identity is what they see before they know any of that. Your logo, font, colors, photography, layout. And those decisions shape an impression almost immediately. That matters much more now because every founder suddenly has access to the same level of decent design. You've probably noticed how the instrument's cerefoam suddenly appeared across half the AI industry. Often placed tightly above some cold product screen shot, and none of those decisions are necessarily bad. They've just become incredibly easy to reproduce, and looking polished is now easier than ever, so standing out for the way you look is there by much harder. And that's where taste starts the matter. By knowing who you want to attract, understanding the world, they already find compelling and making deliberate choices from there. But you also have to bring something of your own, your taste, your DNA, the world that you want this brand to belong to. Because your customer can only ask for things they already know exists. Part of having taste is showing them something they wouldn't have thought to ask for, and then making them wanted once they see it. That's essentially your world and your vision played out visually. So that's what this series is about. Not building a brand in 30 days, but getting inspiration from the right places that will allow you to build the visual system your brand can grow into. And these places aren't just my personal favorites. These are the places that people with top 1% taste go to.

Transcribed automatically from the video, so small errors are possible.