Corporate branding is something that we all come across every day and something that we all buy into, whether it’s shopping for clothes, food, accessories, cosmetics, home interiors, health or even banking, branding will in some way or another affect your purchasing decision. With conscious consumerism and sustainable shopping becoming much more poignant in the media the last couple of years, even those who are shopping more consciously will still be aware of buying into a corporate image or lack of image, especially when opting for the minimalist approach.

With new brands emerging every year with exciting and innovative corporate identities, we’ve noticed a particular influx in mattress companies, eco-friendly water bottles, as well as a strong digital focus towards health and banking within the last year in particular. Is this saying something about our shopping habits? Are more people opting for longevity and willing to invest more in quality products with their purchases? Whatever products you’ve buying lately, you would’ve most likely made notice of the branding (subconsciously or not) which then affected your purchase decision.

With all these latest brands emerging, we couldn’t help but notice the range of incredible corporate branding popping up online (as well as on the streets). From a brand name and logo, colours and typography to supporting graphics, packaging used and corporate storytelling, it all contributes to the image and identity of a brand. There are some really incredible companies around right now that are testing boundaries, coming up with creative solutions and shaking up the world of corporate branding!

Passionate about sleep and obsessed with simplicity, Casper are an award-winning company selling sleep products for your best rest. Their streamlined business model allows customers to purchase any of their premium mattresses for less.

For their corporate identity design, Casper teamed up with Red Antler. Through a unique visual and verbal language, Red Antler developed a quirky and lovable personality with which customers were eager to engage. Casper became the new leader in sleep, rising above a crowded, commodified space to create a deep connection.

S’well was launched in 2010 with the mission to rid the world of plastic water bottles. S’well’s ongoing mission is to create products that are both beautiful and eco-friendly, that infuse innovation with inspiration, and that continue to give back to communities in need.

Sarah Kauss, Founder & CEO, believed that if their company made a crave-worthy bottle that combined fashion with function, people would stop buying disposable bottles, and we could reduce single-use plastic consumption worldwide. Thinkso were the ones behind the distinct name and corporate identity design for the water bottle itself. They designed the original S’well bottle, as well as turning the apostrophe into a symbol – a water droplet.

The Ordinary is a brand from DECIEM, and was created to celebrate intergrity in its most humble and true form. With a strategy to raise pricing and communication integrity in skincare, The Ordinary is an evolving collection of skincare treatments offering familiar and effective clinical technologies.

With well-crafted scientific branding, the ethos behind The Ordinary’s corporate storytelling is very powerful. The ethos is reflected in the name, logo and product packaging. The products are housed in dropper bottles and tubes that look like they came straight from a lab, and feature clinical white labels to add to the scientific aesthetic. With simple and transparent products and packagaing at the forefront of their business, this is one powerful branding example to look out for!

It all started back in 2010 with a question: How do you chill wine to the perfect drinking temperature, without the mess of the conventional ice bucket? After countless hours of ideation and dozens of prototypes, the original Corkcicle in-bottle wine chiller (now known as Corkcicle Air) was born. Since then, Corkcicle has expanded into innovative barware, canteens and tumblers.

From product design, packaging and marketing to social media and content creation, Push helped to develop Corkcicle’s incredible bold yet minimalist corporate image. They developed a brand that is constantly cool and forward-thinking in design, naming and experience throughout the retail world.

Laurel & Wolf are changing the way people design for their homes! There’s no longer hours spent couch-searching and wasted shopping trips. The interior designers partner with the customer to create the best possible version of a project space, all online. Laurel & Wolf then help customers to buy everything in one place.

Tim Hankins is the designer behind their current corporate identity. The phrases ‘vintage, classic, trusted, bold, and confident’ all came up when talking about the reputation of the brand. The classic meets confidence aesthetic is consistent throughout the brand’s visual language.

Monzo have captured their target consumer with digital innovation and a fresh new take on banking. As a business, they’re building a new kind of bank. One that lives on your smartphone and built for the way you live today. Since starting in February 2015, Monzo believe they can make banking better, and they’ve been busy building the best current account in the world.

The Monzo logo itself is very contemporary and in a company blog post, Monzo said that they wanted a logo that conveyed the idea of a technical, yet simple banking experience that feels like “magic.” It’s really the bank cards themselves and the seamless app design that caught our branding attention though! Pitching themselves as the bank of the future, their bright coral-coloured cards and easy-to-use banking app is swiftly taking over the market.

Storybook Cosmetics mission of creating cruelty-free makeup inspired by beloved fairytales has turned them into one of Instagram’s most nostalgic makeup brands. Behind this creative makeup brand is identical triplets Erin, Mandy and Missy Maynard. Storybook Cosmetics went viral on social media in October 2016 and has the masses (and media) wanting more of their storybook inspired makeup.

Nostalgia is the theme which runs throughout their product range, and which makes their makeup so unique. It’s their creative product designs in particular which has helped turn this under-the-radar brand into such a phenomenon amongst many beauty lovers. From Harry Potter and Beauty and the Beast inspired makeup brushes to a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory eyeshadow palette, they certainly know how to summon a cult following with their designs and packaging!

With the aim of providing people with the ability to always have cold water on-the-go, without having to buy single-use plastic water bottles, Chilly’s was founded in 2010 by James Butterfield and Tim Bouscarle.

Chilly’s mission is to accelerate the adoption and everyday use of reusable products. They aim to do this through creating products for an active urban lifestyle, with the perfect balance of distinctive style and unrivalled performance. The Chilly’s bottle is a modern and stylish product designed to combine the convenience of a plastic water bottle, with the high performance technology and eco-friendly benefits of a traditional flask. The simple yet bold chilly logo can be found on every product.

Eve believe that every great day starts the night before so they create beautifully simple products to help you sleep better. From the world’s most comfortable mattress, memory foam pillow and foamtopper to the duvet, linen bedding and the Eve bed frame, each of their top selling products reflect a seamless image. Eve was voted the UK’s number one startup for 2017, by StartUps 100.

With seamless corporate storytelling, Eve feature their iconic yellow branding within the logo, as well as in the products themselves. In terms of the brand message, where other mattress companies focus on sleep or functionality, Eve focus on the benefits of sleep – the idea that every great day starts with a good night’s sleep.

Founded by a team of girls and boys with the vision to re-define the contemporary cool of their generation, Goodbye Bread is more than an online fashion destination. This is a brand which is non-apologetic, rooted in current culture and with an intuitive taste of what will be hot next.

As a company who not only follow trends but they make them, we’d expect nothing less than their visual reputation to be unique, confident and downright fun! From their quirky and illustrative iconography to their packaging, colour schemes and online navigation, Goodbye Bread certainly aren’t afraid of taking risks – just like their customers!

Some of the best brand design around is often the most simplest! Just Water is a great example of this strategy, with their paper-based water bottles and plant-based caps. Just Water is making an impact, one bottle at a time. Selling ethically sourced spring water in a paper bottle, they’re cutting carbon emissions by 74% compared to standard plastic bottles.

In this case, a name can speak a thousand words! The name, Just Water, instantly reveals a lot about this company and the process behind the products they sell. The product is exactly what it says on the tin (or bottle in this case) – 100% spring water, so Just Water. This is why Just Water has made our list of powerful branding examples, as their product, process and resourcing is truly transparent at every stage of production.

Social Chain is a global social media agency, delivering tangible results that have a long term transformational impact on progressive brands. They are a business who use the latest technology to drive strategy, the right minds to inspire creativity, and currently have offices in Manchester, London, New York and Berlin.

Being an agency who combines great corporate storytelling with data-driven, bold and emotive social media for their clients, it’s no surprise that their own corporate storytelling is right on point. Their own branding is bold, fun, contemporary, and reflects the latest digital trends. Looking after the social media accounts of some of the world’s biggest brands, Social Chain are really picking up pace in the digital world with their vibrant identity.

As the name suggests, Media Chain is also part of the Social Chain group (See brand above). Media Chain is a family of rule-breakers and trend-setters who work with well-known brands and agencies to create infectious and engaging content that brings people together. With Media Chain being experts in social media publishing, we wanted to take a look for ourselves at what the hype around this company was all about.

Particularly from their website branding and communications, it’s clear that this is a business whose mission is to shake things up a bit and create some impact. They know what they’re talking about when it comes to creating content, and confidence and boldness certainly comes across with their corporate identity.

Simba is the most advanced mattress in the world, a unique combination of 2,500 conical pocket springs and responsive memory foam. Developing the very latest in cutting edge design, they sell just the one mattress which they believe to be the best.

We love the innovative concept behind Simba’s corporate brand. Simba teamed up with Underexposed. Underexposed helped to create an aspirational brand that demonstrates that the Simba mattress is the most advanced mattress in the world. In terms of the visual for Simba, Underexposed used the form of a mattress label to create the shape of the logo with the 5 lines symbolising the 5 layered technology of the mattress.

Zapier is designed to make a user’s web apps talk to each other and to ease automation for busy people. Zapier moves info between web apps automatically, so users can focus on their most important jobs. The service helps to build unique integrations between favourite web applications, one mouse click at a time.

From the iconography, colours, typography and illustrations, Zapier’s corporate branding is a symbol for making automation easy for busy people and creating a seamless user experience. Zapier use colours to help amplify the personality of their business – fun, clean, and simple, and the typography is organised to keep things simple, readable and non-distracting.

Atom Bank is a company who is positioning itself as the UK’s only mobile-first bank, and are seeking to shake up the banking sector by standing out with a highly personalised service. Launching in 2016 with Fixed Saver accounts and mortgages, Atom Bank offers the ability for customers to tailor their logo for a unique customer experience, as well as log into their account using face and voice recognition.

Atom Bank is doing something really cool with their services and corporate identity. They’re celebrating their customer’s individuality in every way – logo, name and colours can all be customised. The logo consists of three “lozenges” that spell out the letter ‘A’ and this can be personalised to create one of 1.4m combinations.

Believing that everyone should be able to enjoy a healthy financial life, Starling bank is a digital-only bank account. Founder, Anne Boden, pioneered the UK’s first same-day payment service that transformed electronic money. Today, that revolutionary spirit inspires Starling – a mobile-only bank – as a way to put people back in control of their money.

As far as branding goes within the banking industry, the corporate identity of Starling is very modern and leading the way in digital innovation. An agency called The Corner, worked closely with Starling Bank to carefully craft their corporate branding. In its simplest form, the iconography is made up of a purple roundel, with two curved lines that denote the S of Starling Bank. The logo is also designed to be animated in the digital space.

Coined as the “Tinder for beards,” Bristlr is a dating app connecting those with beards to those who want to stroke them. Put simply, the Bristlr app is used to chat to people nearby who like beards (on themselves, or on others, or both). John, the Founder, saw a gap in the market and just went for it.

In terms of the branding, the brand concept itself is pretty unique in its own right, which is why it stood out for us so much. Then there’s the logo design, which has the right balance between edginess and uniqueness but also quite powerful.

Sarah Hancock is the Founder of Skin & Tonic, who created the company with her partner, Josh. Skin & Tonic was born through the inspiration to create organic, minimal and stylish skincare and beauty products. Skin & Tonic products are made from organically certified ingredients, using a maximum of seven ingredients per item sold.

Skin & Tonic have made our list of ‘25 powerful examples of corporate branding,’ simply because of their minimalist yet powerful brand name. The name really reflects the corporate image and ethos whilst being catchy and memorable.

Take control of your NHS repeat prescriptions – Echo is a simple, free service that delivers your medicine to your door. With almost half of all adults taking a repeat prescription, but 40% of medication not being taken as directed, Echo’s mission is to remove the barriers to adherence through elegant, user-focused design and technology.

For the healthcare industry, innovative visual branding doesn’t particularly play an important role however Echo are shaking it up by bringing current technological advancements to the healthcare industry, as well as bringing their refreshing visual identity to the market.

Since the evening they met, it was clear that Jennie Wiggins and Seb Heeley shared the same dream of starting a business together. After some rather amusing ideas initially, they met a gentleman who told them the fundamentals of making gin. From that day they knew they needed to make their own gin together. So in 2015 they began the adventure of a lifetime!

Not many people know that the Bee is a symbol of Manchester. This was adopted during the Industrial Revolution as it embodied the work-ethic of Mancunians’ during the time when Manchester was leading the way in production methods. Manchester Gin have also adopted the iconic “worker bee” symbol of Manchester within their own logo.

Yuhme is the world’s most eco-friendly reusable water bottle with a purpose. With both founders, Alex and Alex, being former athletes, it was natural for them to create something sports related. Something that appeals to every sport – a water bottle! After going through several different materials, they came across a special type of bio plastic, not produced from oil but sugarcane! What is more, it had a negative CO2 footprint!

After thoroughly researching the material, they both realised that this was the only material they could make a water bottle from. The Yuhme logo is powerful in our eyes as it truly reflects their ethos of helping to protect our environment and resources, and helping to spread the message that both consumers and businesses need to start changing lifestyle habits when it comes to environmental impact.

Launching in 2014, Cirqle is a service where users can share and collaborate on photo and video collections in groups, both public and private. Cirqle is a place for stories – for capturing memories right in the moment. Behind Cirqle is an international team of developers, designers and community managers based in New York, Amsterdam and Berlin.

The name, Cirqle, instantly stood out to us alone – especially as this is a business which heavily involves the community and creating a place for users to share their photos with one another. Both the name and the logo are symbol of community spirit and a powerful example of corporate branding.

Umbrellas are yet another piece of urban luggage which we all hate to carry around, however the team over at Blunt has solved the problem of umbrellas. By combining innovative design with quality workmanship, Blunt has created a range of durable umbrellas that perform when you need them most.

Featuring an intelligent structural design, the umbrella design itself is so unique that the umbrella IS the visual identity of the brand. The curved edges and Blunt tips (patented innovation) form the logo, as well as most of the branding for the business.

Milkteds® is a world first in the fusion of concept, design and innovation resulting in the most scientifically advanced, comfortable medical grade compression products ever.

Made from a unique milk fibre yarn mix (yes it is actually made from drinking milk!), it’s no wonder that the Milkteds® company chose to use a milk bottle symbol within their logos and packaging. Quite a daring corporate identity in the world of compression hosiery and shapewear, and we love it!