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 Aspects
of Visual Identity:
One of the main features of corporate design is its visual identity. It
is a device with which one visualises a corporation and its product(s)
or service(s). Like the way Procter and Gamble's candles during the mid-nineteenth
century had become distinct in their shipments from those manufactured
by other companies. Just because some dock workers had decided to brand
P&G's crates with a star. And yet, this single visual feature had landed
the company with such distinction almost as if in affirmation of its credibility
as a quality conscious set up, that the company actually ended up taking
a clue out of this success to refine the star as a tool to market all
its other products.
While the star on P&G's products had connoted quality, there is the other
well known instance of Otto Preminger's movie of the fifties 'The Man
with the Golden Arm,' whose symbol of a fragmented arm designed by Saul
Bass, had come to connote the very notion of success for Hollywood. And
this at the height of television's assault on the big screen. As a corporate
identity for the movie's campaign promotion, the symbol of the hand had
become so well known that when the film first opened on Broadway, the
only element to appear as a form of its announcement was the arm in blazing
lights on the marquee along Times Square - there were to be no titles,
no copy - just the symbol which had seemed adequate enough to cause the
necessary advertising impact. But most importantly as a business proposition,
the value of the symbol had turned out to be at least a million dollars
extra in ticket sales, in the estimation of Preminger its director.
Visual identity in a rather compelling sense, therefore, is like a calling
card for its company. And in more ways than one, it continues to represent
"a fast, persuasive, high-impact element of communication," where one
of its most important functions remains the creation of strong consumer
recognition and awareness. As Bereswill, a senior communications executive
with experience in design and implementation of strategic communications
states: "history has shown that once an organisation has committed itself
to producing quality products and making the public aware of its brand
items, consumers tend to return to that same brand again and again." .
What
is a corporate identity system?
The
market and the designer
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