Images can affect your brand’s identity—from supplementing your existing identity to defining a new one, images are a major part of the way users “see” your brand.

Before you choose images to accent your brand, it’s important to decipher your brand’s identity without imaging. First, who is your audience? What is your mission? If your brand had to be defined by a personality, what would it be?

These are not questions to be answered overnight, but it’s important that your decisions—creative and otherwise—are made with an element of brand identity in mind.

While brainstorming your own brand identity, consider familiar companies. For instance, Apple has a definite tone, look, and personality. With sleek, minimalist design, Apple’s identity is somewhat futuristic. Apple seeks to be a leader in innovation, and therefore, appeals to a huge demographic—those who want a user-friendly, streamlined approach to technological advancement.

Alternatively, a brand like The Art of Manliness serves a much more niche audience, and does so with a completely opposing style. The art of manliness is a blog-based brand designed for modern men who appreciate self-improvement.

The brand utilizes a vintage, traditionally masculine aesthetic. This appreciation of the past is very different from Apple’s progressive, futuristic approach.