In design, like in other professions, we tend to take our industry-specific language for granted. Words like "holistic," "interdisciplinary" and "ethnography" make perfect sense to us, but to someone who doesn't spend their day in front of a whiteboard or buried in a sketchbook, it sounds greek. A glaring example of this, and one that we encounter constantly, is the idea of a brand.

In the last few decades, the term "branding" has been ardently adopted by the business community and subsequently misused roughly 700 trillion times. What people often think of as branding — logos, fonts, colors and imagery — are actually components of the visual identity, or the visuals associated with a brand. The branding process, on the other hand, is about more than simply designing a new logo for an organization — it's about defining the emotional connection people will have with its products and services.

Simply put, a brand is not a tangible thing — it's a person's perception or gut feeling about a product, service or organization.

Let's look at Nike for a quick example of this. Many would think of the iconic "swoosh" as Nike's branding, but this is only partially true. The core idea behind Nike's brand is the idea of "empowering people, no matter who they are, to be great athletes." Nike uses the guiding phrase "authentic athletic performance" to articulate the emotional connection that customers should have with the company. This key idea (or 'Essence') is the actual brand, which informs every aspect of what Nike does. Their logo merely serves to evoke this essence in a succinct way.

Defining your brand is a wonderful way to align organizational goals, communication and marketing strategy. This starts with recognizing that your brand exists as a living idea in the minds of your customers, and not merely as a logo on a brochure or website. Branding is not about fabricating an image; it's an authentic expression of what customers love about your organization — and why they'll keep loving it for years to come.

For more on branding, check out Marty Neumeier's The Brand Gap or say hi at hello@cododesign.com