Last week, we took a deep dive into creating a brand voice and persona.
As a continuation of executing your brand, we’re now going to talk about your brand guidelines.
These are specific rules on your brand which should be followed carefully to ensure that you create cohesiveness across everything you do.
Let’s dive in!
Creating Brand Guidelines
With every branding project I execute, I deliver at minimum a one-page style guide to help my clients know and understand this is their brand guidelines moving forward.
Here’s what that one-pager includes:
- Logo Versions: The full color, all black, and inverse logo versions. This shows each color variation that can be used based on the final design.
- Brand Fonts: Each font is described, what it is used for, and where you should apply these fonts in your brand collateral.
- Brand Colors: The color palette for your brand, including the Pantone color, RGB, CMYK and Hex code.
This is a one-page style guide I put together for a client:
As you can see, there’s nothing extraordinarily ground-breaking about this — it’s plain, simple and easy to read.
You can be more descriptive, depending on the brand and client’s needs. Such as, where should you (or shouldn’t you) use that font? Or what specific logo should be used for print? Or web? Or where you shouldn’t be using the logo on certain backgrounds?
The purpose is for you to hold onto this and forever reference it so you are ALWAYS using the same fonts, the same colors, and applying the right logo for the right use.
Beyond a simple one-pager, you can execute a much larger, in-depth style guide that details more than the basics. This can include:
- Brand message & vision
- Logo do’s and don’ts
- Spacing guidelines
- Stationery design
- Miscellaneous mockups
- Photography
- ….and more
These large, in-depth style guide booklets are helpful for larger businesses who have several employees working in different departments.
By having this booklet, you can pass it on to everyone so that your brand is executed the same and remains in-tact — no matter if it’s a letterhead, billboard, or a social media post.
The idea is cohesion and consistency.
With consistency, comes brand recognition.
And with brand recognition, comes brand awareness.
Brand awareness creates customers, and customers are the lifeline of every business.
By establishing and executing your brand guidelines, you can create a positive trickle effect in your business.
They hold a lot more power than you might have estimated.
If you haven’t established your guidelines, more than likely you are already using certain colors and fonts most of the time — stick to what speaks best to your brand, your persona and your image, and be consistent.
An inconsistent logo creates confusion — even the same logo in a new color.
And the last thing you want to do is confuse your customers.
Reach out to AWD if you’re in need of a style guide, or brand re-do.
On the next, and last in the brand execution series, we’ll dive into the best ways to apply your brand, and some do’s and don’ts you should follow.
See you then!
