Corporate Identity
CI
In short
Corporate identity is how a company sees itself, expressed in three parts: how it behaves, how it communicates and how it looks. Appearance is one third of it. A corporate identity answers what a business stands for; a logo answers how you recognise it. The second follows from the first, not the other way round.
How it differs from corporate design
This is the confusion that costs the most money. Corporate design is the visible shell: logo, colours, typography, imagery. Corporate identity covers behaviour, communication and appearance together – design is the third part of it.
In practice: ordering a new logo and expecting perception to shift means paying for one part and expecting three. If the phone manner, the quote and the response time stay the same, so does the impression.
How you notice it is missing
Not in the design, but in the inconsistency. Two employees describe the company differently. The quote reads nothing like the website. On LinkedIn the firm sounds serious, on Instagram it sounds like a different business.
The second sign is the question «why you and not the others?», to which nobody internally gives the same answer. That is not a communication problem. It is a missing self-image.
The Swiss specific: identity is not automatically protected
A corporate identity comes about through use; a legal right does not. In Switzerland a name and logo are protected as a trade mark only once registered with the Swiss Federal Institute of Intellectual Property – that is governed by the Trade Mark Protection Act (MSchG, SR 232.11).
An entry in the commercial register is a different thing: it secures the company name of the legal entity, not the mark. Invest heavily in an identity and never register it, and you have built a brand without a right to it.
How we handle it
We start at the position, not the sketch. Only once it is clear what a business stands for and who it means does a visual identity follow – otherwise you are designing a claim.
What comes out then has to hold everywhere: on the website, in the quote, and in photo and video. An identity that only holds in the guidelines is not one.
Related terms
A term in your quote that nobody explained?
In a strategy call we translate the offer in front of you – even when it did not come from us.