The difference between a logo, an identity and a brand

Four words get used as if they meant the same thing in nearly every branding meeting, and the confusion costs money. They are logo, identity, brand and branding. A logo is a mark. An identity is the designed system that mark belongs to. A brand is the set of memories and expectations sitting in other people's heads, which is the part nobody in the room controls, and branding is the work of trying to move that third thing by means of the second, together with everything else the company does. Keep the four apart and most briefs, quotes and arguments about design get easier to settle.

The logo is the smallest of the four. Paul Rand, who drew marks for IBM, ABC and Westinghouse, described its job in a 1991 essay, writing that a logo does not sell, at least not directly, but identifies. He added that a logo takes its meaning from the quality of the thing it stands for, and gave the Mercedes star as a mark with nothing to do with cars that became a great symbol because it stood for a great product. Designers sort logos into a few kinds. A wordmark is the name drawn as lettering, like Coca-Cola's script. A symbol works without the name, like Nike's swoosh, and a monogram is built from initials, like the interlocked LV of Louis Vuitton. A combination mark locks a symbol and a name together, and an emblem sets the name inside a shape, as the Starbucks mark did until 2011, when the words around the siren were removed.

An identity is everything a company designs and controls so that it looks, sounds and behaves like itself. The mark is one part. Type, colour, photography, layout, tone of voice and the rules that hold them together are the rest, which is why this course gives a whole module to identity systems. Wally Olins, who co-founded the consultancy Wolff Olins in 1965, argued in his 1989 book Corporate Identity that identity reaches further still. He said it covers four areas of activity, namely what a company makes or sells, the places where it makes or sells it, how it describes what it does, and how its people behave to each other and to outsiders. Most designers work on the third area. Customers experience all four.

A brand is the part nobody can design directly. It is what a person remembers, expects and feels when they meet the name or the mark, and it is assembled from things the company never drew, such as how long delivery took, what the packaging felt like to open, what a friend said and what came up when they searched the name. The law draws a related line. A trade mark is a legal right to a sign, such as a name or a logo, for particular goods and services, and a company can register it, license it and sell it. The company owns the trade mark, the artwork and the guidelines. The associations that make the sign worth owning stay in customers' heads.

A few more words cause specific damage. A tagline sits with the logo and is meant to last for years, while a campaign line belongs to one campaign and is meant to be retired with it. A rebrand changes what a company is called, how it looks or what it stands for, and a refresh redraws the existing identity without changing its meaning. Brand strategy is the thinking about what the brand should mean and to whom, and visual identity is the designed part a customer can see. The words in each pair sound close, and the projects they describe are priced very differently.

Working designers use these words exactly, and they translate when a client does not. When a client asks for a new brand, a good designer asks what they want to be true in a customer's head that is not true today, and only then decides whether the answer is a new logo, a new identity or changes that have nothing to do with design. Gap shows what happens when a logo is treated as the whole thing. In October 2010 it put a new logo on its website with no identity around it and no explanation, people judged the drawing on its own, and the company withdrew it within a week. The mark never did a job.