Best Books On Branding – 10 Top Picks Recommended For You

Great branding increases the value of your company and keeps your customers coming back for more. Beyond just a memorable logo, the most impactful brands of our time enacted various strategies to stay in the minds of customers and improve their lives. 

So how do you become an expert on branding? You learn from the pros, of course! We’ve found the best books on branding so you can learn from those who know exactly what they’re doing.

Best Books On Branding

To learn more about how to establish a brand identity and gain a bigger name, take a look at the top 10 books below on branding. 

1. Designing Brand Identity by Alina Wheeler

Designing Brand Identity is the best-selling toolkit for creating, building, and maintaining a strong brand. This book offers brand managers, digital marketers, and graphic designers a proven, five-phase process for creating an effective brand identity. Enriched with new case studies from world-class brands, this book teaches you how design influences audiences.

By reading this, you’ll learn about the latest design trends in global markets, social networks, apps, and more. Graphic design is one of the most important factors of marketing, making it useful for anyone in business to learn more. 

2. The Brand Gap by Marty Neumeier

In The Brand Gap, author Marty Neumeier presents a unified theory on brand-building. While most books focus on a single strategy, this book focuses on multiple ways to build a charismatic brand. After all, you want customers to feel that your brand is essential to their lives.

In this entertaining, 2-hour read, you’ll learn the five essential disciplines of brand-building, how branding changes the dynamics of competition, and how you can test out brand concepts cheaply and quickly. 

3. Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller

This #1 best-selling book will teach you how to clarify your message so that customers will listen. In this, Donald Miller uses the seven universal elements of powerful stories to teach readers how to dramatically improve their connections with customers and the way that they run their business.

This process is a proven solution to help business owners find a way to effectively talk about their brand. This revolutionary method gives readers the competitive advantage and reveals the secrets for helping their customers understand the compelling benefits of their products and services. 

4. Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits by Debbie Millman

The United States alone is home to over 45,000 shopping malls. Even though all water is, for the most part, the same, we pick and choose which brand to buy it from. Figuring out why we behave in this way can help us become our customers’ #1 choice. We telegraph our affiliations of our beliefs with symbols, signs, and codes.

Understanding why humans have branded the world around us is the first step to building an impactful brand identity. 

5. The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al Ries

This marketing classic is the definitive text on branding, talking about how some of the best brands in the world gained success, and interviewing multiple marketing experts on their take as well. This book contains all you need to stand out in today’s marketplace when it comes to building your brand and promoting your product.

This book also tackles one of the most difficult aspects of building a brand today: marketing on the web. In this, Ries dives into the tactics that small and large brands have used to establish internet brands. 

6. Branding: In Five and a Half Steps by Michael Johnson

Branding: In Five and a Half Steps is the ultimate step-by-step visual guide to creating a public brand. Using contemporary brand identities as prototypes, this book dives into proven ways to create a company that influences customers’ life decisions. The first part of building a brand isn’t to find a solution, but to identify the correct question.

Once you identify the missing gap in the market, you’ll unveil and apply the hidden elements of creating a successful brand. From a brand narrative to impactful design and narrative, you’ll build a brand that positively impacts the lives of others.

7. Logo Design Love by David Airey 

Logo Design Love is a comprehensive guide for creating iconic brand identities. In this, David Airey shows you how to create an iconic brand image from start to finish. Using client case studies as examples, he teaches the reader how to generate ideas, charge for their work, and collaborate with clients. 

Furthermore, author David Airey shares his personal experience working on identity projects with well-known designers. 

8. Identity Designed by David Airey

Identity Designed is the definitive guide to visual branding. Perfect for designers and entrepreneurs, this book will expand your understanding of effective design in business. In this, David Airey formalizes the benefits of brand identity design and includes his collection of high-caliber projects from the world’s most talented design studios.

By reading this, you’ll understand the history and importance of branding, the best practices for your business, and multiple ways to exceed client expectations. From conducting research to generating ideas, this book has all you need to know to build an impactful and inspiring brand identity. 

9. Emotional Branding by Marc Gobe

Emotional Branding is the new paradigm for connecting brands to people. This best-selling business book contains revolutionary practices and explains how you can shift the focus from the products to the people. Perfect for marketing and creative professionals, this book has been named a benchmark for branding by many industry experts.

In our new consumer democracy, branding practices have evolved, making it more important than ever for your brand to thrive in the new marketing atmosphere. 

10. What Great Brands Do by Denise Lee Yohn 

What Great Brands Do contains seven brand-building principles that separate the best from the rest. If you’re looking to discover proven strategies for building powerful, world-class brands, this is the book for you. Although it’s convenient to believe that big brands like Apple got their big name from some magic formula, they did it through a formula that you can activate too. 

This book provides you with all you need to know to turn your ordinary brand into an industry leader. Yohn’s brand-as-business strategy enhances brand identity, improves company culture, and fosters positive stakeholder relationships. 

Becoming A Branding Expert

The books above will help you active a multitude of various marketing strategies to make your brand the #1 go-to for customers. In the ever-evolving world of the Internet, it’s more important than ever to keep up with new branding strategies to make your customers happier than ever.