We live in a branded world.  All around us are the images associated with brands. But what is a brand? What are the functions of brands?

Well?

According to the third edition of “Designing Brand Identity,” by Alina Wheeler, a brand is the emotional connection a person has with a company. And if you put it the way Marty Neumeier does, in his very awesome book “The Brand Gap,” a brand is a “gut feeling.”

This summer, I had the chance to read several books on design, including Neumeir’s “The Brand Gap” and “ Zag” as well as the second edition of “Deigning Brand Identity.” What I learned about brands and design this summer lit a spark inside me.

This week, I have revisited the first part of “Designing Brand Identity” and it is amazing all the little things you forget in just a couple of short months. Let alone all the new morsels of information added to this edition.

Twitter is a consistent presence. In fact, the importance of social media in the third edition is quite persistent compared to the second edition. It is truly amazing that only a few years have passed between the two editions.

Social media has changed so much of how a company and consumers communicate. It used to be that the company transmitted a message, and that was it. Now the people can respond. Companies must be increasingly aware of consumer opinions. With the Internet, a single voice can be heard by thousands of people. When negative opinions are expressed, brands can be damaged.

And, maintaining a positive brand “feeling” is extraordinarily important when you consider that a brand, that “gut feeling,” can be as much as 75% of a company’s net worth.

Brands are very important to companies, and design serves a very important role in building them. One of the major components of a brand is the brand identity.

A brand identity serves as the tangible points that consumers can “feel.”  A brand identity “takes disparate elements and unifies them into whole systems.”

When it comes to branding, it takes unification. The company must align itself with one message. It must present itself as a strong entity, or it will crumble. It must combine all its messages into one “big idea” and then present it to the world.

Customers need to experience the brand positively, or they won’t come back for seconds. No. They will tell all their Internet friends about the negative expense, and thus weaken the brand’s worth.

At the end of the day, a brand must be unified, a brand must be different, and a brand must be strong. If these criteria are not met, the brand will slip.