3 years ago
5 things to look for when building your brand guidelines
Grace Thompson
So, you’re starting your brand guidelines.
But where do you start?
In short, brand guidelines are the bread and butter of your organisation. We all know that the look of your business captures your audience’s attention – it’s the first thing that they see after all!
You want to keep your brand consistent across the board, to be recognised wherever and whenever – whether that’s printed items or digital images.
Here’s our list of things to look out for when creating your brand guidelines:
1. Logo
Easily the most recognisable piece of branding that you will need!
Your logo should tell your audience in a split second of what type of company you are. Whether that’s using bright colours to convey the energy within your business or how formal your font choice is to show the level of professionalism – your logo can say a lot!
The use of your logo should be listed in your guidelines to help your team know when and where to use it.
Do you have variations of your logo? Is there light and dark versions? Can it be used across print and digital? These are things you should consider asking yourself when creating your logo.
Within your brand guidelines – we recommend that the rules for your logo should be stated clearly for your team.
2. Colours
Knowing your brand and its colours is another thing that captures the eye of your audience no matter where your product is marketed.
The colours of your brand work with your logo in harmony, creating a polished look throughout all your touchpoints.
The colours of your brand work with your logo in harmony, creating a polished look throughout all your touchpoints.
Similarly to the logo, it’s the first thing your audience will see. These colours will follow your brand around. Whether you’re making any announcements, sending press releases or creating product launches – your company can be recognisable just from the colour alone.
It’s inherently important to include the correct colour codes (in both RGB and CYMK) within your guidelines to improve consistency throughout your brand. No one wants a mismatched dark blue colour!
3. Fonts/Typography
Fonts – a universal language that can be recognised all over the world.
You’ll need a basic understanding of font types for your logo and match the typeface with the logo. We recommend having a couple of different fonts to use in different scenarios.
A usual rule of thumb is to have a header and body font.
Your header can be used to highlight titles or important information, whilst your body text does the rest of the talking.
Your header can be used to highlight titles or important information, whilst your body text does the rest of the talking.
(Some organisations have sub header fonts or even call out fonts, but generally keeping it simple will make your brand easier to manage across the board.)
By listing out your fonts within your brand guidelines will help with the consistency of your messaging no matter where you’re doing the talking.
4. Images
Should you be using images for your brand – whether that’s promotional photographs, stock images or product photos – you want to make sure that there is a consistent theme across your images.
Whether it’s the style of images you take or create, you want to ensure that your images work with your brand.
We’d recommend setting up an online “image bank” where your team can get access to all your photos and files easily (see our Digital Asset Management feature for more!)
Enabling your team to access your files from any device and location gives them the access to your brand wherever they are – say goodbye to local servers and hello to Cloud based working!
5. Wording
To wrap our list up – you want to ensure that your message is received loud and clear but also, you want to have a similar tone in your messages (especially when it comes to marketing!
For example, here at Brand iQ, we tend to get the following: Brandiq, BrandIQ, BrandiQ etc… for us, we wanted to drill down our name when it came to our marketing and ensuring that our company name looks the same every time in our marketing messages.
Your tone of messaging (or your voice) is something you want to convey early on when it comes to your brand guidelines.
Do you want to sound fun and light-hearted with every communication? Or do you need to bring in a more serious tone? These questions can usually be asked when you being to set out your marketing and business plans, especially when you know which audiences you want to target your product to.
But how do you get your brand guidelines across to your teams efficiently
With the power of Brand iQ, you can make use of our Brand Guide feature where you can send your guidelines ready for downloading or have an intuitive interactive version which can be updated as your business adapts and grows.
Find out more about the most powerful all in one brand platform by getting in touch with one of the team: hello@brand-iq.co.uk
