Design identity system based on product identity and its case studies

Brand identity plays an important role in the transforming and upgrading of OEM industry. This paper explores how to construct a brand identity by design approaches and design thinking, which includes product design identity, communication design identity, service design identity, and mind design identity, strategy design identity, behavior design identity. Further, aimed to original brand manufacture, a cake model of design identity is refined from three levels of product individual, product series/cluster and product brand, and three parts of product identity, communication identity and mind identity. In one case study of Sony, this paper analyses the communication designs, product designs and mind design in music players of Walkman, digital cameras of Cyber-shot, and mobile phone of Sony-Ericsson, so as to clarificate the relationship between brand identity and its sub-brand identity. In the other case study of Samsung, this paper analyses the product identity, communication identity and mind identity in mobile phone, digital camera and display, so as to explore how to unify different product categories into a single brand and fulfill its brand identity. And then some clues can be found to build brand identity from both multi-brand strategy and single-brand strategy, where mind identity is crucial and decisive. Finally, this paper rethinks the design identity system based on product identity in the new context.