If you could paint the picture of your brand, what would it look like? A good brand is a set of concepts that everyone can consume, whether expressed in words, colours, or images or in a combination of these three dimensions. A brand is a body of concepts to which consumers relate through their emotions. If they aren’t feeling your brand, then your creative approaches aren’t working, and it’s time to go back to the drawing board.
Here, we explain the meaning of a branding design style guide and why it’s crucial for your company’s success:
1. The canvas doesn’t paint itself.
Remember, people need to understand your brand through images, but you want a guide for the colours that will go on the white space. Another way to think of this dilemma is that a branding design style guide don’t appear out of thin air. Someone must create them, and this usually takes place in the mysterious halls of a creative marketing agency. Sometimes, we consume vast amounts of coffee and candy before we get it right.
2. Everyone who works on the brand must understand the guide.
Think of it this way. If you assign an employee to place the logo on a new section of the company website, they can use the guide. If your marketing agency must draft a brochure for distribution at your next trade show, they can also use the guide. This would include instructions for how to use elements in different marketing formats.
3. The devil is in the details.
A branding design style guide should outline the proper combination of these types of visual elements: fonts, colours, logos (including proper sizing and placement), icons, images, creative text, and web components. You might also include formats for specific digital elements such as videos and animated graphics.
4. It’s something outsiders can use.
Your business partners should be able to follow the branding guides details when publishing content about your company or when planning co-marketing campaigns. They would work with the same parameters as we would as your creative marketing team.
An Example
Here’s an example of why a business would need a branding design style guide. A college with a school mascot for inter-scholastic sports has different versions of this figure available for use on TV, web, and mobile and in print publications. Because the college would copyright the various versions of its mascot, it could theoretically sue other parties for improper use of this figure. The school mascot would include the same colours, style, and tone as other branding elements of the school (i.e. its official name in a logo form).
Break It Down
If you’re going to commit to the branding design process for your company, then you need to develop a branding guide in the beginning. This occurs well before any specific textual or visual marketing content is prepared for the first launch. We understand what it takes to define a brand so it stands out in the market. We have the creative team ready to craft your brand visually, conceptually, and literally so that it will achieve your marketing goals. The branding guide should remain true to your business model and should fall somewhere between too outrageous and too dull for your intended audiences. That being said, if your company serves multiple markets because it has different product and service lines, we will study how to make your branding guide match all markets.
It’s a process to craft a brand and develop content for all marketing communications. None of this should occur by accident after some creative wakes up with a fresh idea. Tell us the concepts that express your brand and we will craft a branding guide for use in every format. You can’t afford to send out mixed messages to consumers by skipping the stage of writing a branding guide.
Fancy a coffee to discuss your creative brief?