Brand identity
A brand identity is the complete visual system a brand runs on: the mark, the typography, the colour, the photographic direction, and the written rules that keep them consistent wherever the brand appears. CIMA builds these end to end from Kuwait City, and produces the photography and film that carry them, so the identity and the content that uses it never drift apart.
What we do
We start with the market and the audience rather than the logo, because the decisions that make an identity hold together are made before anything is drawn. What we hand over is a system, not a file: the mark and its variants, a type and colour scale, art-direction references, and the guidelines that let an in-house team apply all of it without calling us.
- Logo and monogram systems
- Typography and colour systems
- Art direction and visual language
- Packaging and print direction
- Retail, booth and environment design
- Brand guidelines a team can operate without us
How it runs
- 01
Discover
The brand, its market and its audience, until there is a story actually worth telling.
- 02
Define
Positioning and the written idea the visual work has to carry.
- 03
Design
Mark, type, colour and art direction, composed together rather than in sequence.
- 04
Systematise
Guidelines, asset libraries and the rules that keep it coherent as it scales.
When it is the right call
- Launching a new brand and needing every surface to agree from day one
- A brand that has grown past the identity it started with
- Inconsistency across retail, packaging, social and events
- A merger or sub-brand that needs to sit under an existing parent
In Kuwait and the Gulf
Most Gulf identities have to work in Arabic and English at the same size, in the same lockup, without one script looking like an afterthought. That constraint shapes the type choices and the mark's proportions from the first sketch, and it is far cheaper to design for than to retrofit.
Brand identity, asked and answered
- What is the difference between a logo and a brand identity?
- A logo is one asset. A brand identity is the system it lives inside: type, colour, photographic direction, layout rules and the guidelines that keep them consistent. A logo on its own cannot make a social post, a shopfront and a package look like the same company.
- Do you work with an existing logo, or start again?
- Both happen. Where a mark carries real recognition we build the system around it rather than replacing it, because throwing away recognition is expensive. Where it is genuinely holding the brand back, we say so before any work starts.
- What do we receive at the end?
- Master artwork in production formats, a type and colour system, art-direction references, and written guidelines. The test we hold ourselves to is whether your team can brief a printer or a photographer from the guidelines without us in the room.
Talk to us about your brand.