Hi everybody. My name is Mario and I'd like to welcome you to today's lesson on Corporate Branding. So we'll learn about corporate branding and then check out a few examples to see what that looks like. So as always, feel free to stop, fast forward, and rewind as you see fit and then when you're ready to go, let's jump in.
Let's begin by defining corporate branding. Corporate branding is a method that corporations use to produce value through brand recognition. One major aspect of that-- corporate branding-- is logo design. We're all familiar with the logos and, of course, we see them all around us. A logo is typically a graphical element that may or may not incorporate text. In this case, the eBay logo is all text. And if we take a look at this Ubuntu logo, it's just the graphic. And this Aeon logo, it's both the graphic and the text that creates the logo.
So another function of corporate branding is called corporate identity and corporate identity is the personality of a corporation and how it establishes culture and business practices among its employees. One way that a corporation helps establish that identity is to use what's called a corporate identity manual or CIM for short. Now corporate identity manual is a set of guidelines for precise reproduction of a corporation's logo, fonts or any visual design elements relating to their brand. Again, CIM sets visual identity that employees use as a guideline to communicate the corporation's brand and this would be the first thing a designer would look at before approaching a design with the corporation.
I know that none of this might sound relevant to design but all of this comes into play when you approach branding as a designer and these days it's more than just a logo and some text when you're producing something. Corporate identity plays a huge role in how we perceive a company, a brand and a product. So for designers, we need to know these things to effectively build a visual design language for us to then communicate a company's intentions, culture and place in the consumers' lives.
All this can be achieved through use of logo, as we saw, or letterhead suite, which is an organized display of a letterhead on correspondent's material. And you might see this in corresponding documents from a company, the top headers and you can also see this when you get emails from companies showcasing their logo and brand in the headers. And likewise, it can be achieved through advertising, storytelling and all these things to help build and create an iconic symbol as a result of conditioning a brand over a long period of time. You want to recognize brands instantly and know what they're all about.
Well, everyone that ends today's lesson. Let's conclude with our key terms for today-- corporate branding, logo, iconic symbol, corporate identity, corporate identity manual, letterhead suite, and brand recognition. I hope you've enjoyed today's lesson. My name is Mario and I'll see you next lesson.