Brand Guidelines Are Your Friend
If you haven’t already, please do your business a favour and get yourself some brand guidelines. You’ll thank us later.
We love brand guidelines. They’re a simple and cost effective way to ensure you have a recognisable, consistent brand that your organisation invests in. Consistency is a super easy way to achieve a professional looking brand.
But why does my small business need them?
The rule of 3’s
It’s common marketing knowledge that your audience needs to be exposed to a brand approx. three times before they remember it or take action. The same rule applies for how we recognise a brands marketing and communications.
When creating new marketing materials whether its an advert, a business card or a social media post, experts agree that at least three commonly used design elements are needed before your audience can recognise who it’s from. Think about Pic’s Peanut Butter - every time you see their advertising or product you instantly recognise them via the strong brand colours, logo and font.
Guidelines help you quickly check that each piece of your collateral or marketing materials has at least three of your brands design elements.
Sick of the sight
All too often design and marketing teams hear comments like “But the boss is over the red” - it’s your main brand colour Karen!
Solid and clear brand guidelines help you ensure one person, designer or boss, doesn’t derail your brand on an off-day. They also provide you a solid reason for why you can’t use neon pink instead of the brand red.
Everyone will thank you …
Your designers will be delighted to have a base to work from and something consistent to tie back to.
Your marketers will be grateful for a solid stake in the ground they can check against.
Your customers will appreciate the clarity of your brand in very busy environments like social media.
You’ll be relieved when your new marketing materials arrive on time and look amazing.
So you’re sold on getting your brand guidelines set up?
There are different types to choose from:
Different types of brand guidelines
1. Identity one-pager
These are just a one page visual identity guideline that includes nothing more than the logos, colours and fonts you use. This is the best option for a busy business, with no budgets and a small amount of design work in the pipeline.
They ensure consistency whether you’re whipping something together internally or are sending it to a designer. These are the simplest and easiest guideline you can have. It’s so easy there is no excuse to not at least have this.
2. Visual identity guidelines
These guidelines are all about the full look and feel of the brand. It includes standards like fonts, colours and logos but it also gives details about why the brand was designed like it is, photography styles used, graphic elements available and examples of the brand in use on business cards, brochures and websites etc.
These mid-sized guidelines are great when you have a lot of design and marketing work. They help the whole organisation create a consistent look and feel across all branded documents, templates, advertising etc.
3. Complete brand story and guidelines
These are the big 40 page booklets that big brands like Z Energy use. It’s more like a storybook than a guideline. It details the mission and vision of the organisation, the way they work, who the audience is and why they look the way you do.
These guidelines aim to help staff in large organisations understand how the organisation works and allows them to keep consistency across all aspects of their business. The intention is that anyone could walk into different stores around the country and see the same designs, receive the same service and easily recognise the brand.
You know your business best and what type of guideline is most useful. Do your business a favour - pick one of the guideline styles and have it handy at all times. Whether you’re building an entire new website or a small ad going in the local paper, at the very least, use your guidelines to check your colours, fonts and logos look the same. Your brand will thank you.
This brand insight was kindly put together by one of our favourite hoomans, who also happens to have a depth of marketing know-how from her time running social media teams, building digital communities, creating and managing killer campaigns for some iconic NZ brands, and being an overall good b***h at GBB too.
Check out her site, insta, twittering, and connect with Kelsie on LinkedIn.
She also likes to cosy up to any and every dog she can find!