Top 10 Best Books On Branding
There's a reason why the top branding books continue to be so popular in creative circles. A good branding book can sometimes feel like it's uncovering a new ... read more...hidden universe of design and psychology by providing an unrivaled insight into the world of design and the ways that branding can have an effect on the way we think. Furthermore, outstanding branding books are typically wonderfully designed - you'd be disappointed if they weren't! As a result, these books are ideal for any creative's coffee table, and are a joy to pick up and read again and again. We've compiled a list of the best books on branding here.
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Johnson Banks was founded in 1992 by Michael Johnson. He has won scores of design accolades since then. He also wrote the book Problem Solved.
Michael Johnson is a world-renowned graphic designer and brand strategist. His firm, johnson banks, is responsible for the rebranding of a number of well-known clients, including Virgin Atlantic, Think London, BFI, Christian Aid, and MORE TH>N, and he has won numerous accolades in the process.
In Branding, Johnson breaks down ordinary brands into their most basic components, including case studies that help us understand why we choose one product or service over another and how seemingly insignificant factors can effect important life decisions. The first section of the book demonstrates how the creation of a brand begins with recognizing the correct questionthe missing gap in the market to which an answer is required. Johnson then begins to reveal the hidden factors involved in developing a great brand, ranging from the strapline, which provides the brand a narrative and a purpose, to innovative typographic applications that combine design and language.
Branding explores every step of the development process required to create the simplest and most immediately compelling brands, with over 1,000 vibrant illustrations showcasing the world's most successful corporate identities, as well as generic templates allowing you to easily create your own brand or ad.
Author: Michael Johnson
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0500518963
Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 190 reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #66,855 in Books
#7 in Branding & Logo Design
#80 in Advertising (Books)
#412 in Marketing (Books)
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David Airey is a Northern Irish entrepreneur and graphic designer. DavidAirey.com, LogoDesignLove.com, and IdentityDesigned.com are three of the most prominent graphic design blogs on the Internet. David's blogs have drawn hundreds of thousands of devoted followers who read and are inspired by his writing on a daily basis. David is also the author of Work for Money, Design for Love and Logo Design Love.
Identity Designed, written by best-selling author and famous designer David Airey, formalizes the process and benefits of brand identity design and includes a significant collection of high-caliber work from a variety of the world's most brilliant design studios.
You'll learn about the history and significance of branding, as well as a current assessment of best practices and how there is always more than one approach to exceed customer expectations. You'll also learn how to do research, define strategy, generate ideas, create touchpoints, implement style guides, and futureproof your designs. Each identification case study is followed by a key point recap.
Lantern, Base, Pharus, OCD, Rice Creative, Foreign Policy, Underline Studio, Fedoriv, Freytag Anderson, Bedow, Robot Food, Together Design, Believe in, Jack Renwick Studio, ico Design, and Lundgren+Lindqvist are among the designers included in the book.
Identity Designed is essential reading not only for designers, but also for businesspeople who wish to better their job by learning how good design is good business.
Author: David Airey
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1631595946
Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 276 reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #98,042 in Books
#11 in Branding & Logo Design
#77 in Market Research Business (Books)
#590 in Design & Decorative Arts
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Beat Kaspar Baudenbacher was born in Switzerland and raised there. He earned a BFA in graphic design from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. He has led loyalkaspar's creative journey from a boutique animation studio to one of the leading branding agencies in the American entertainment space as Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer. He spends his days pondering what it takes for brands to communicate cohesive and compelling stories across an ever-expanding universe of material, and his nights pondering the effects of brands on their audiences and how the two interact.
From our products to our politics, Somewhere Yes takes us on a trip aimed to make us rethink the intentionality of our decisions, the depth of our generosity, and our very place as a species on this planet.
Branding has the potential to build human connection, but it frequently fosters division and distance. However, it does not have to be this way; it has merely evolved into this fight as a result of our allowing our individual desires to trump our communal requirements, much like a symbol of beauty might become a symbol of fascism. Baudenbacher offers insightful ways to dismantle the identity crisis we've haphazardly assembled, so that we can belong... better.
Author: Beat Kaspar Baudenbacher
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Somewhere-Yes-Search-Belonging-Branding/dp/1639080112
Best Sellers Rank: #209,483 in Books
#41 in Branding & Logo Design
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Catharine Slade-Brooking has worked in branding, packaging, and illustration for clients such as GlaxoSmithKline, Lloyds Bank, and the Sunday Times. She has published numerous books on graphic design topics, including 'The Encyclopedia of Illustration Techniques,' and has exhibited her work both domestically and internationally, from the Mall Galleries in London to the Norsk Farmasihistorisk Museum in Oslo. She has over 15 years of experience teaching in the university sector, specializing in branding and visual identity, and now teaches on the BA Graphic Communication degree at Farnham UCA.
Creating a Brand Identity delves into the creative processes involved in creating a successful brand identity, one of the most exciting and complicated tasks in graphic design.
This best-selling book is appropriate for students, professionals, and organizations involved in the following fields:
- Graphic Design
- Branding
- Brand Management
- Advertising
- Marketing
Creating a Brand Identity, written by design and branding specialist Catharine Slade-Brooking, offers exercises and examples that emphasize the fundamental tasks conducted by graphic designers to establish strong brand identities, such as:
- Audience definition
- Competitor analysis
- Mood board creation
- Brand naming
- Logo design
- Client presentations
- Rebranding
- Launching a new brand identity
Throughout the book, case studies are presented with brand identities from a variety of industries such as digital media, fashion, advertising, product design, packaging, retail, and more.
To illustrate the text, photographs of professional design concepts, brand case studies, and diagrams are used throughout the book. Flowcharts are also widely used to demonstrate the step-by-step technique utilized by industry professionals to establish a brand.
Catharine Slade-experience Brooking's as a graduate joining the world of branding and having to learn the hard way, 'on the job,' inspired the book's content. As a result, the author was able to create teaching materials for undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled in the BA Graphic Communication programme at the University of the Creative Arts, where Slade-Brooking is a lecturer. The book has been recommended for a variety of university courses, including graphic design, animation, digital media, textiles, and interior design. It provides a comprehensive vocabulary of brand terms as well as a list of recommended additional reading.
Author: Catharine Slade-Brooking
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1780675623
Ratings: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 361 reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #109,540 in Books
#16 in Branding & Logo Design
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Donald Miller is the founder and CEO of Business Made Simple, an online platform that teaches business professionals what they need to know to grow a business and increase their personal value in the marketplace. He hosts the Business Made Simple podcast and has written several books, including the best-selling Building a StoryBrand.
Nobody will buy your product if you use the wrong words to describe it. Marketers and business owners struggle to connect with their customers successfully, costing them and their firms millions of dollars in lost income.
Donald Miller knows firsthand how difficult it is for business owners to effectively cut through the noise to reach their clients in a world plagued with frequent, on-demand diversions. In this book, he reveals the tried-and-true system he developed to help you engage and actually impact clients.
The StoryBrand approach is a tried-and-true answer to the problem that company leaders have while discussing their organizations. Customers that do not grasp what you can do for them and are unwilling to interact will cost you potential sales, customer engagement chances, and much more if you do not have a clear, unambiguous message.
Donald Miller shows marketers and company owners how to leverage the seven universal characteristics of effective stories to radically enhance how they engage with clients and develop their businesses in Building a StoryBrand.
His tried-and-true process has assisted thousands of businesses in engaging with their existing consumers, giving them the ultimate competitive advantage. Among the best books on branding, Building a StoryBrand teaches you how to do this by teaching you:
- The seven universal story points that all humans respond to; the true reasons customers buy;
- how to simplify a brand message so that people understand it;
- how to produce the most effective messaging for websites, brochures, and social media.
Building a StoryBrand will forever change the way you talk about who you are, what you do, and the unique value you bring to your customers, whether you are the marketing director of a multibillion-dollar company, the owner of a small business, a politician running for office, or the lead singer of a rock band.
Author: Donald Miller
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0718033329
Ratings: 4.7 out of 5 stars (from 6602 reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #2,530 in Books
#1 in Web Marketing (Books)
#1 in Customer Relations (Books)
#2 in Business Writing Skills (Books)
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Alina Wheeler guides businesses through a dynamic process of brand development and best practices adoption. Wheeler motivates the entire branding team to grab every chance to create memorable client experiences at every touchpoint. The fifth edition of Designing Brand Identity is the first book to dissect the branding process into a uniform, five-phase methodology.
Whether you're the project manager for your company's rebrand or you need to teach your employees or students about brand foundations, Designing Brand Identity is the go-to resource. Designing Brand Identity is a collection of tools for branding success and best practices for inspiration, ranging from research to brand strategy to design execution, launch, and governance.
- There are three sections: brand fundamentals, process fundamentals, and case studies.
- There are over 100 branding topics, checklists, tools, and illustrations.
- 50 case studies describing goals, processes, strategies, solutions, and outcomes.
- Over 700 brand touchpoint graphics.
- There are almost 400 quotes from branding professionals, CEOs, and design experts.
Designing Brand Identity is a thorough, practical, and user-friendly reference for all brand builders, whether global and local. It's a must-have resource when putting together a full brand system. Alina Wheeler explains identity design and how it works better than anyone else. There's a reason this classic is in its fifth edition.
Author: Alina Wheeler
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Brand-Identity-Essential-Branding/dp/1118980824/
Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 574 reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #29,114 in Books
#1 in Branding & Logo Design
#6 in Advertising Graphic Design
#92 in Graphic Design Techniques
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Debbie Millman has been in the design industry for almost 25 years. She is the president of Sterling Brands' design section. She has been there for about fifteen years and has worked on worldwide brand redesigns for Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, Colgate, Nestle, and Hasbro. Millman is the President of the AIGA, the world's largest professional design association.
Rob Walker writes for publications such as The New York Times Magazine and Design Observer. He is the author of Letters from New Orleans and Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are.
The concept of brand, like any other concept that dominates markets and public perception, is difficult to describe. Is it a simple differentiator between cereals in our pantries, a manipulative brainwashing weapon imposed on us by companies, or a creative triumph capable of arousing our emotions and intellect like any other art form?
Among the best books on branding, Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits lifts the conversation to the level of revelation for those of us who battle with these problems on a regular basis. Each chapter is a lengthy conversation between Debbie Millman, herself a design visionary, and a different industry leader. Millman coaxes logical, insightful answers from twenty-two interview subjects, including Malcolm Gladwell, Tom Peters, Seth Godin, and Wally Olins, by asking questions strongly informed by her own expertise.
This engrossing and informative book provides an unprecedented platform on the condition of modern branding and how businesses and consumers may best understand the behavior that drives why we brand and why we buy.
Author: Debbie Millman and Rob Walker
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Brand-Thinking-Other-Noble-Pursuits/dp/162153247X/
Ratings: 4.3 out of 5 stars (from 151 reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #61,756 in Books
#5 in Branding & Logo Design
#11 in Advertising Graphic Design
#29 in Typography (Books)
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Chen Design Associates' creator, principal, and creative director is Joshua C. Chen. Josh has over 20 years of industry expertise in design, television, journalism, and music. His diversified background, as well as having resided in a number of countries, including Singapore, France, and Belgium, lends to each project a worldwide grasp of client objectives.
Margaret leads the North American office of Aamplify.partner, giving subject matter experience in the application of archetypes in branding. She believes in the attraction, relationship, and authenticity powers. She considers systems, strategies, and surprises. She expresses herself through metaphor, music, and story. She has an MBA in Sustainable Management from Presidio Graduate School, a BA from UC Berkeley, and an advanced coaching certification from the Palo Alto Institute of Transpersonal Psychology.
Archetypes in Branding, an approachable and practical approach to brand creation that can assist you in energizing your brand strategy and creating compelling and authentic communications.
This kit, when used with a companion deck of sixty original archetype cards, will provide you with a useful tool to:
- Share your brand's motivations, how it operates in the world, what its trigger points are, and why particular customers are drawn to it.
- Build relationships with the numerous stakeholders who have an impact on your business.
- Allow your team to be creative and innovate with integrity.
Author: Joshua C. Chen and Margaret Hartwell
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Archetypes-Branding-Toolkit-Creatives-Strategists/dp/1440308187/
Ratings: 4.5 out of 5 stars (from 190 reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #173,155 in Books
#28 in Branding & Logo Design
#631 in Graphic Design Techniques
#1,055 in Design & Decorative Arts
- Share your brand's motivations, how it operates in the world, what its trigger points are, and why particular customers are drawn to it.
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What would your life and business look like if you could double your sales and raise your prices in the next 30 days? In Branding Secrets, one of the best books on branding, you will find out what branding professionals don't want you to know.
More than four years of research, 34 interviews with entrepreneurs, $30,000 invested, hundreds of enemies acquired along the road, 1 attempted lynching, exclusion from the lucrative circle of 'experts'... All of this simply to be able to share with you the best kept branding secrets, secrets that will allow you to establish your brand for much less money than you think.
What will you discover as a result?
- In this book, you'll learn how to establish the fundamental aspects of your brand, those that may instantly increase your sales and pricing, by outsourcing to the top professionals at low cost.
- Avoid the long years of hard labor and impossible investments that other companies have taken to build the security and trust required to sell without regard for price.
- Forget about learning to do everything yourself or settling for your cousin, friend, neighbor, etc. to do it for you... because you don't have enough money!
So, for whom is Branding Secrets written?
- Owners of businesses: Whether you're a small firm starting out or a large corporation with years of expertise, this book can help you take your company to the "next level."
- Entrepreneurs: Do you ever feel like you'd have to be Superman to handle all of the moving parts of your project? Do you continue to join up for (and pay for) courses and training sessions in order to learn everything there is to know for yourself?
Author: Kevin Albert
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Branding-Secrets-Underground-Playbook-Building/dp/B08W3FBHBK/
Ratings: 4.3 out of 5 stars (from 81 reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #218,441 in Books
#45 in Branding & Logo Design
#216 in Direct Marketing (Books)
#239 in Web Design (Books)
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Radim Malinic is a bestselling author, creative director, and designer. He manages Brand Nu, an award-winning branding and creative studio, from his home in South West London. Malinic released his third book, Book of Branding, in November 2019 - a guide to building brand identity for businesses and beyond. The most recent Amazon best-seller follows the critically acclaimed and widely popular titles Book of Ideas Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. These inspire and assist novices and professionals all around the world in finding a new way to approach the complex process of creative work.
Among the best books on branding, Book of Branding is a must-have addition to every startup's toolset, written for entrepreneurs, founders, visual designers, brand makers, and anybody looking to decipher the intricate world of brand identity.
The book's conversational, jargon-free tone assists the reader in understanding key parts of the brand identity process. The book provides real-life case studies to demonstrate how outstanding collaborative work may be accomplished, providing first-hand experience, insights, and advice throughout.
Book of Branding is a creative handbook for new enterprises, start-ups, and people that emphasizes the importance of visual identity in brand development.
Author: Radim Malinic
Link to buy: https://www.amazon.com/Book-Branding-creating-identity-startups/dp/0993540031/
Ratings: 4.6 out of 5 stars (from 317 reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #341,645 in Books
#74 in Branding & Logo Design
#82 in Product Management
#1,131 in Graphic Design Techniques