3 branding and design books compared

How these branding and design books differ

Design Better and Build Your Brand in Canva starts with accessible production: helping non-designers and small businesses create usable brand and marketing materials. The Principles of Logo Design narrows the field to the construction of effective marks, symbols and icons. Creating a Brand Identity covers the broader professional process, connecting research and strategy with a complete visual system.

The three books therefore represent different scales of work. Canva helps execute everyday branded communication. Logo principles improve the central identifying mark. Brand-identity methodology coordinates the mark with typography, colour, imagery, voice and real-world applications.

What connects branding and design?

Branding defines the associations an organisation wants to build; design gives many of those associations a visible and usable form. Design cannot repair an unclear strategy, but strategy without coherent execution may remain invisible or inconsistent.

• Purpose: clarify why the organisation exists and what value it creates.
• Positioning: define the distinctive place the brand should occupy.
• Identity: translate strategy into recognisable verbal and visual assets.
• System: establish rules that work across formats, teams and channels.
• Experience: ensure that products, service and behaviour support the designed promise.

Where do the words “branding” and “design” come from?

Brand developed from an old word associated with burning and the identifying marks placed on property or goods. Its meaning expanded from a physical mark to the wider set of associations connected with a name, organisation or product. Design comes through French and Italian from Latin roots related to marking out, indicating or planning.

Together, branding and design describe more than decoration. Branding concerns recognition and meaning; design concerns purposeful decisions that shape how that meaning is expressed and experienced.

A famous historical example: the London Underground identity

The London Underground identity shows how design elements can become a durable public system. The roundel, Johnston typeface, diagrammatic map and consistent signage made a complex transport network easier to recognise and navigate. Individual elements were valuable, but their coordinated use created the stronger identity.

The lesson is that an identity succeeds through application. A logo may open the system, but typography, colour, layout, information design and repeated public experience turn it into a living brand.

Words related to branding and design

• Visual identity: the coordinated visible elements representing a brand.
• Logo: a distinctive wordmark, symbol or combined identifying mark.
• Wordmark: a logo constructed primarily from the brand name in type.
• Symbol: a graphic form carrying recognition or meaning.
• Typography: the selection and arrangement of letterforms.
• Art direction: the guiding visual approach across imagery and communication.
• Brand guidelines: documented principles for consistent identity use.
• Touchpoint: any moment or medium through which someone encounters a brand.
• Design system: reusable rules and components supporting coherent execution.

A closer look at each book

Design Better and Build Your Brand in Canva

Laura Goodsell provides the most accessible and tool-oriented route. It is suited to entrepreneurs, marketers and small teams that must produce professional-looking materials without a full design department.

Choose it when the immediate problem is execution: building consistent social graphics, marketing pieces and everyday branded content. Templates accelerate production, but the strongest results still begin with clear positioning and defined identity choices.

The Principles of Logo Design

George Bokhua focuses on the discipline of creating memorable signs, symbols and icons. The book is the most specialised selection and is especially relevant to designers who want to strengthen visual reduction, balance and symbolic thinking.

Choose it when the core challenge is the identifying mark itself. A successful logo must remain recognisable across small, large, digital and physical applications without attempting to explain the entire business.

Creating a Brand Identity

Catharine Slade-Brooking presents the widest professional process, from research and strategic definition through concept development and implementation. It is the strongest choice for designers managing a complete client identity project.

Choose it when you need to understand how discovery, positioning, visual development, presentation and rollout connect. It places the logo inside a broader system rather than treating it as the final objective.

Recommendation by reader

Entrepreneur or Canva beginner: choose Design Better and Build Your Brand in Canva.

Logo designer: choose The Principles of Logo Design.

Brand-identity designer or agency: choose Creating a Brand Identity.

Small internal marketing team: combine the Canva guide with a documented identity system so production remains consistent as output grows.