Tips on How to Create Brand Guidelines Part One
When it comes to building a memorable brand, it's all about consistency. Imagine that you're shopping for your favorite cereal or coffee at the grocery store, you want to be able to spot it from a mile away.
The best brands stick in our brains because their presence is defined by the repetition of the same logo design, fonts, colors, and images. Developing a consistent brand starts with creating a brand style guide.
What Are Brand Guidelines?
Brand guidelines, also called a brand style guide, are essentially an instruction manual and rule book on how to communicate your brand to your complete team such as marketers, designers, web developers, community managers and more.
They lay out all the visual details, as well as important notes about the company’s voice, tone, and messaging. They come in the form of a physical or digital booklet filled with examples of what to do and what not to do.
What Should a Brand Guideline Contain?
- Mission: vision, values and statements.
- Logos: full logos, secondary logos, and icons.
- Color palette: primary and secondary colors.
- Typography: font styles, sizes, and spacing.
- Other imagery: photos, illustrations, and artwork.
- Voice and tone: how the brand uses language and emotion.
When companies take the time to create brand guidelines, it helps to ensure that their brand image stays consistent no matter where it shows up.
This will pay off big time in the long run, as your company will generate the familiarity and reliability that open the doors to brand loyalty.
