Living in a Visual World: Why Visual Branding is More Important Than Ever in 2025

Forget ROYGBIV — astonishingly, researchers suggest that the human eye can detect around one million colors. This goes some way to explain why we’re such visual creatures: 81% of people are more likely to remember a brand’s color than its name, and a signature color can increase brand recognition by 80%.

While every entrepreneur knows they need a logo, many don’t grasp the full impact of visual branding. Every element of brand design, product packaging and marketing content must align to create an overall powerful impression, and the impact of visual branding on consumer trust and recognition is only getting stronger.

In 2025, visual branding is more important than ever, and there are two main strategies brands are using to adapt to this new landscape. Let’s find out why you need a visually impactful brand, and how to capitalize on visual branding in a virtual world.

Why Visual Branding Matters More Than Ever

Visual branding is now one of the major priorities of ambitious brands, leading to some high-profile rebrands in recent years, most notably Jaguar’s flashy but ultimately flawed move. Here’s why every business needs to invest in its look this year.

Visual-first Platforms Dominate

Visual content has now firmly overtaken the written word as the internet’s go-to form of entertainment. The Instagram photo has replaced the Facebook status as the main form of social media sharing, and the rise of TikTok has led to the rapid integration of video content in other platforms such as YouTube’s Shorts and Instagram’s Reels. To build awareness, brands need to adapt to an increasingly visual, virtual world.

Content Overload

In a bid to capture their audience’s attention, the big three content platforms — TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube — have doubled down on short-form video content. The average consumer now spends close to three hours a day on social media, leading to content overload and shortened attention spans. Brands now need to work harder than ever to engage their audience, and that starts with immediate and arresting design.

Building Trust in a Competitive Landscape

Alongside the rise of social media, the internet has lowered the barrier to entry in almost every industry, and since 2022, an explosion of AI tools allows businesses to be built and branded in just days. In an increasingly competitive landscape, where consumers have more choice but fewer proven options, visual recognition is more strongly associated with trust.

Building a recognizable and visually impactful brand is now essential, so how are brands going about it? With two main strategies.

Visual Branding in 2025

From billboard ads to social media scrolls, customer attention is up for grabs — but as the opportunities for engaging your audience with visual content grow, the competition for attention increases.

From 60mph on the highway to 60 scrolls per second on the apps, here are the two main trends brands are leveraging to leverage a split-second audience encounter.

Some Brands Are Embracing Minimalism

In today’s visually driven multi-platform world, it’s logical for brands to move to stripped-back logos and design. After all, one logo appearing across everything from billboards to websites can strengthen brand recognition. With this in mind, 2025 has seen big-name names undertake a brand refresh that tended towards the minimal this year, with everyone from design stalwarts Adobe to Herman Miller stripping things back.

Minimalism is versatile, enables instant brand recognition and a streamlined approach to multi-platform content. However, research from Atom.com has found that one in five consumers call minimalism uninspiring, and rebranding towards minimalism typically leaves consumers cold. Brands have to be careful to find a balance, ensuring that minimal branding enables them to become ubiquitous without fading into the background.

… While Others are Branding to Stand Out

While some brands are embracing minimalism, others are looking to stand out, and one branding trend is particularly well-received in 2025. Humanized branding, coming in the form of hand-written typography and illustration-styled imagery, is seen as the best for standing out, and was described as different by 37% of respondents in that same study.

It’s not just about AI — computer-generated graphics have been the norm in design for a decade, but the rise of AI has created a tipping point, leading consumers back to design that looks deliberately human.

Oat milk brand Oatly exemplifies this strategy, with quirky branding and cartoony product design that pair with an offbeat brand voice to build a powerful brand persona. In doing so, Oatly has built an unmistakable visual brand, and their products leap off the shelves ahead of competitors. This has contributed to a huge leap in customer awareness and hit the bottom line as gross profit grew from $32.6 million in 2023 to $62 million in 2024.

So What Should Brands Do?

The pull of minimal, versatile logos is countered with the push of engaging consumers with humanized, playful and bold design. Brands seeking to stand out in 2025 must undertake a balancing act.

• Prioritize versatile brand design: Whether brand colors or typography, remember that content must be adaptable across platforms.
• Utilize AI tools: AI tools make it easier than ever to build visual content at scale.
• Remember your audience: In the clamor for audience attention, never forget who you’re trying to reach. The biggest rebrand missteps, such as Jaguar’s colorful “woke” rebrand, hopped on bandwagons that their audience wasn’t rolling with.
• Keep the human touch: Every business, at its core, is solving a human problem, so emphasize the personal at every opportunity. This could take the form of a hand-drawn logo, a personalized note tucked into a delivery, or by championing customer stories in your marketing.

Make a Splash

Whether you’re building a new brand or considering a strategic redesign, your visual identity has never been more important than in 2025. We now have more platforms and mediums to share, but they all have one thing in common: they’re visual first.

No matter your strategy, from the most minimal vector logo to the boldest brand identity, your visual elements need to connect with customers. A strong visual identity isn’t just about looking good: it’s about being remembered. In a world flooded with content, the brands that stand out are the ones that show up consistently and with character.

Invest in a visual identity that reflects your values, tells your story, and gives your audience something to recognize, because when people see you clearly, they’re far more likely to trust you, remember you, and to come back for more.