Brands have become the global currency of success.

Countries, corporations, communities, and individuals are leveraging their brands to gain a transcendent advantage in the marketplace. Positioning a brand to be irreplaceable is the new business imperative for both public and private sectors, regardless of product, service, or size.

Brand Atlas synthesizes the most relevant brand topics for the big-picture, time-crunched professional who just wants to get up to speed on brand basics, brand oversight, and marketplace trends. Streamlined content, provocative diagrams, and quotes from brand visionaries and thought leaders make this valuable resource a new experience.

The twenty-first-century customer has a new voice, unprecedented power, and multiple platforms to drive a new brand conversation in a fiercely competitive world. To be successful, brand builders need to stick to the basics, stay calm on the rollercoaster of relentless change, and seize every opportunity to be the brand of choice.

Alina Wheeler is a branding consultant and author of Designing Brand ­Identity (Wiley), the bestselling global resource for businesses and nonprofits. Her business is managing perception; her service is strategic imagination and her passion is brand. She was advisory council member for The Dictionary of Brand, edited by Marty Neumeier, along with Seth Godin, Al Ries, and Tom Kelley.

Joel Katz is an information designer and a global authority on the visualization of complex information. He lectures internationally and is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome (2003). A graduate of Yale College and the Yale School of Art in graphic design, he teaches information design at The University of the Arts and Philadelphia University.