Brand Identity Essentials

By Kevin Budelmann and Yang Kim

Ralph Caplan, Author of By Design and The Design of Herman Miller.

100 Principles for Building Brands

Brand Identity Essentials lays a foundation for brand building, defining the tools and illustrating the construction of strong brands through examples of world-class design. Making a brand great is easier said than done. This book is a guide for leaders, managers, and makers who build brands.

For Brand Managers
Brand management checklists for basics, application, and strategic thinking. Brand audits provide a way to think about and collaborate on brand decision making. Use these tools to conduct brand reviews, frame improvements, and empower teams.

For Educators
Fundamentals of brand building from aesthetics to strategy. This class curriculum offers a scaffolding for brand building. Students are exposed to building blocks for branding, how to align aesthetic choices with strategy, and build robust brand programs.

For Designers
A one-stop reference for connecting design elements to strategic branding concepts. It can be hard to know where to begin to address the complexity of customer experience, but a recipe can help. We’ve built a model for thinking about brand building that can help you make decisions and create systems.

“Brand Identity Essentials, Revised and Expanded” by Kevin Budelmann and Yang Kim, published by Rockport Publishers, an imprint of The Quarto Group. Copyright © 2010, 2019 Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc. All rights reserved.

Brand Resources

Kevin Budelmann is a speaker, writer, educator, and president of Peopledesign.

He is interested in design theory and practice in the context of business, technology, and society. After his BA from Carnegie Mellon, he earned a Master of Design Methods from IIT Institute of Design.

Kevin has served in leadership roles for the IxDA, the Interaction Design Association, AIGA, Professional Association for Design, and APDF, the Association of Professional Design. Kevin is also an adjunct professor at Northwestern University.

Yang Kim is the creative director of Peopledesign.

She draws on her experiences from Seoul to Washington, D.C., Carnegie Mellon to Herman Miller. Kim’s work has been recognized by her peers for its clarity, distinctiveness, humanity, and charm. Her no-nonsense style, her wit, and her devotion to her work have earned her longstanding relationships with clients.

Yang is an AAF Silver Medal Award recipient, an AIGA Fellow, and was voted as one of the “50 Most Influential Designers Working Today” in a Graphic Design:USA reader survey.