What are Brand Guidelines?
Brand Guidelines (which are also known as style guides or a visual identity system) define how a brand should be visually represented across all touch points; digital or physical.
Brand Guidelines stand alone but can also feed into the Brand Identity which is broader in scope encompassing the brand story, its personality, tone of voice and what it stands for.
Additionally, brand guidelines will form the backbone of a design system, which is a detailed and comprehensive set of elements used for digital products.
Who needs Brand Guidelines?
In short, every business! That said, the size and maturity of a business will broadly dictate the depth and scope of brand identity, but all businesses should have brand guidelines. These will define the logo and its usage, the brand fonts and typography rules, brand colours and colour hierarchy, and may also define the tone of voice.
The scope of brand guidelines define how a brand (or business) will represent itself and they ensure consistency across all touchpoints from email signatures to the website to social content, paid media & advertising, any printed material such as brochures or Point Of Sale, internal communications or that with investors, customers and third parties.
In short, Brand guidelines are vital for businesses of all sizes to ensure they have a well defined and consistent form of visual communication across all touchpoints, which, in turns develops customer recognition and trust.
Put another way, think of any large brand you know (such as a retailer, a car manufacturer or a consumer electronics business) and think of any interactions you have had with them, be it through email, a physical experience, an advert or their website and it will be consistent throughout. If that consistency breaks, you lose trust and respect - and this is why brand guidelines are so important.
Who uses Brand Guidelines?
Once defined, brand guidelines will then be used typically by marketing teams but also external agencies, in-house creative teams and anyone responsible for communicating or representing the brand.
The bigger the business - especially if it spans multiple territories - the more important the Brand Guidelines are, and equally the importance of their understanding, usage and accessibility is.
In these instances, brand guardian(s) will own the brand guidelines and will they ensure consistent usage across all communication channels, they will review communications and be the point of reference on how the guidelines should be applied.
In terms of making the guidelines accessible to users, they might sit on the company intranet, a portal or bespoke site or sit within a Digital Asset Management system such as Frontify.
To wrap up
Every business of any size should have some form of brand guidelines. For smaller businesses, they do not have to be comprehensive but should define the logo, it’s usage, colour palette and typography.
If you’d like to chat to us to see if we can help with your Brand Guidelines, just get in touch!