Today’s marketplace is highly competitive (for public attention, for charitable giving, for applicants, customers, or patients). There is little tolerance for anything less than a highly compelling brand identity to open the door for a more substantial span of attention. However, any institution of long standing accumulates layers of individually sensible decisions that gradually begin to erode the clarity of its perceived identity. From time to time any institution must step back and re-evaluate, refresh, and renew its brand identity.

Corporate identity programs originated in marketing, and are largely executed by graphic designers. The most fundamental issues involved in developing an institutional or corporate identity, however, are strategic, rather than design-based. No successful identity program can be developed without a clear understanding of mission, values, and strategic plan, on the one hand, (the identity of the institution), and communications through actions, concepts, words, design, and architecture (the projection of identity through brand definition) on the other. Fundamentally, an institutional identity involves

• articulating clearly the mission, values and uniqueness of the institution (the identity concept: this is the essential – yet often under-developed – aspect of identity),
  
  
• developing a framework of standards, guidelines, and even templates for systematizing the expression of the institution’s identity (the identity plan), and
  
  
• imbedding the identity message in all of the means through which the institution represents itself to the public (representation of identity, which establishes the brand).

Synthesis Partnership has worked on identity issues with many clients, often with prompt and substantial business benefits.