Why Brand Design is More Than Just a Logo

The Difference between Branding, Brand Identity, and Brand Design

These three get thrown around like they’re interchangeable, but they’re not. Let’s untangle them:

• Branding: The perception people have about you. It’s the gut feeling in someone’s head when they think about your business. You can’t control it entirely (spoiler: people will make up their own minds), but you can guide it.

• Brand identity: This is who you are and how you express it. Yes, it’s the visuals – logo, colour palette, typography… the lot. But it’s also your values, tone of voice, and personality and how this becomes tied into your design. This is where you need to make sure your brand feels consistent, whether someone’s holding your packaging, scrolling through your TikTok, or reading your About page.

• Brand design: What is brand design, then? The craft of turning that identity into a living, breathing experience. It’s the decisions that make your values visible: why your eco-brand uses raw, uncoated paper stock, or why your premium beauty brand leans into glossy finishes and serif typefaces. Brand design is where your strategy becomes a visual reality.

At Noramble, we always say: branding happens whether you like it or not. So the real question is: do you want it to happen by accident, or by design? If you’re just getting started, understanding the difference between these layers is essential. That’s why we always recommend investing in strong brand design for startups – so your values and vision actually show up in how your brand looks, feels, and speaks to people.

How Smart Design Shapes Customer Perception

Before a customer ever hits “add to cart” or fills out a contact form, they’ve already formed an opinion about your brand. They’ve scrolled your Instagram, eyeballed your packaging in-store, and side-eyed you next to your competitors – all without saying a word.

A brand refresh can flip the script. In a world of endless options, design is often the deciding factor. Here’s why 👇: 

The smartest brand design says the right thing to the right people – and keeps saying it over and over until they can’t forget you.

Real-World Examples of Brands that Nailed (or Failed) their Design

Let’s spill some tea on a few brands we think are smashing it and some that didn’t quite do the right thing. Hopefully you can learn from this and avoid making the same mistakes:

1. Who Gives A Crap (Nailed It)

Who Gives A Crap (WGAC) has transformed a mundane product like toilet paper into something much bigger. The Toilet Paper That’s Changing the World, One Roll at a Time.

👉 Sustainability that matters: WGAC products are made from 100% recycled paper or bamboo, wrapped in paper (not plastic) and their shipping is carbon‑neutral.

👉 Half the profits, 100% of the impact: The brand pledges 50% of profits to fund clean water and sanitation projects worldwide – so far raising millions to build toilets and water systems in needy communities.

👉 Packaging with personality: Their bubbly, punny wraps and playful patterns are purposefully vibrant – an intentional departure from the “white and puppies” norms of toilet paper packaging.

👉 Community-first voice and storytelling: Their tone is cheeky, social media is full of memes and mascots like “Simon the S***,” all while simultaneously packing their packaging with impact stats and mission messaging.

👉 Retail and reputation: From humble online beginnings to shelves in Tesco, Waitrose, and more, WGAC is now a top-tier non‑supermarket brand in the UK – even beating out big dogs with their ethical edge and distinctive look.

Who Gives A Crap proves that even toilet paper can become iconic when you fuse sustainability, cheek, and substance into a knockout visual identity and brand story

2. Surreal (Nailed It)

Surreal disrupts their own category effortlessly. Surreal took the tired cereal aisle – cartoon tigers, rainbows, and sugar bombs – and flipped it on its head.

Their packaging is bold, stripped-back, and mischievous, with oversized typography and bright colours that stop you mid-scroll (or mid-supermarket wander). Pair that with a sarcastic, tongue-in-cheek tone of voice (“Don’t tell Tony” plastered on billboards aimed at Frosties’ mascot) and you’ve got a brand that feels modern, confident, and impossible to ignore.

The product is high‑protein, sugar‑free, keto‑friendly, gluten‑free, and totally plant‑based – basically, breakfast’s unicorn.

They flip nostalgia on its head, mix health with humour, and prove you can be witty, weird, and modern without losing credibility on the supermarket shelf.

3. Tropicana’s 2009 Rebrand (Failed It)

Tropicana went from staple of the fresh juice aisle to a cautionary tale fast. In early 2009, they ditched their instantly recognisable orange-with-straw carton for a minimalist design featuring a glass of juice and a bespoke “orange-textured” cap. But the result wasn’t what they expected it to be – It became a $30M lesson in what not to do. 

What went wrong?
Customers didn’t just dislike the new look – they couldn’t find the product. With the orange and straw gone, and the logo rotated vertically and reduced in prominence, the packaging looked generic and lost its shelf impact.

👉 A 20% drop in sales within two months, translating to a staggering $30 million loss.
👉 The brand yanked the redesign in record time – just 30 days in – and went crawling back to their classic look.

What You Can Take Away From This

• Brand equity is sacred. Your best-sellers have signature elements for a reason – don't toss them without strategy.
• Test before you launch. Tropicana skipped proper consumer research or focus groups and paid for it in mega-dollars.
• Shelf psychology matters. Packaging isn’t design in a vacuum – it lives in aisles. If it can’t pop or communicate quickly, it’s a flop.

Instagram’s Bold Logo Overhaul (Somewhere In Between)

When Instagram dropped its Polaroid-style camera icon for a neon-gradient glyph in 2016, the internet basically rioted. Critics called it “horrible,” “trash,” and accused the brand of flushing years of user familiarity “down the toilet. But four years later? That gradient is one of the most instantly recognised logos on the planet.

Here’s the deeper cut behind that design gamble – and why, against the odds, it paid off:

👉 Why they did it: The old retro-camera logo, once charming, had become painfully outdated. Instagram had evolved into a hub for video content, global communities, and creator culture. The new gradient logo was crafted to reflect that shift.

👉 Design power: gradient storytelling: That rainbow gradient carried meaning, wrapped in colour. It conveyed creativity, connection, and warmth.

👉 Minimalism with purpose: The icon kept a simple camera outline – less detail, more recognition. That clean form, paired with the bold gradient, stuck across sizes and platforms like a champ.

👉 Time turned haters into believers: Yeah, there was backlash. Users mourned the loss of the “golden age.” But like any big-brand glow-up, people adapted. The gradient’s impact became obvious in retrospect.

👉 Trendsetter vibes: Instagram’s gradient kickstarted a design movement. Gradients became a whole visual trend across tech and media brands afterward.

What You Can Take Away From This

• Emotion trumps familiarity – but timing matters. You need courage to repurpose brand equity. But when your visuals align with who you’ve become, even haters soften with time.

• Signal > detail. Boldness and simplicity can coexist – just make sure what you keep resonates (like Instagram kept the camera glyph).

• Design can lead culture, not just follow it. Instagram’s gradient wasn’t safe. It was trendsetting. And it changed the visual language of the digital age.

The Noramble Takeaway

If there’s one thing these stories show – whether it’s Tropicana tanking $30m in 30 days or Who Gives A Crap turning bog roll into a cult brand – it’s this: design is the difference between forgettable and unshakably iconic. A logo is just a very small piece of the whole brand design puzzle. Your logo might open the door, but it won’t keep people inside.

Failures teach us what not to strip away, successes show us how bold you can be when you know your brand’s truth, and the grey area (hi Instagram) reminds us that sometimes, guts pay off – if you give people time to adjust.

That’s why we hammer this point: brand design is everything to your brand. It shapes how people see you before you’ve even opened your mouth. It’s not about “a logo that pops,” it’s about creating a whole ecosystem – colours, tone, packaging, identity – that pulls people in and keeps them there.

At Noramble, we’re not in the business of surface-level pretty. We’re here to help you avoid becoming the next Tropicana, and instead craft something radically ownable – your version of success. Because when every detail works in sync, you dominate the aisle, the feed, or wherever your brand lives.

Fancy working together? You know where we are.