When you are starting to build your brand, one of the most important things to create is a consistent visual identity. In order to make sure that your brand's look is consistent, a style guide or a brand manual is essential. These guides can range anywhere from a simple one page spread to a full brand bible book. Once the brand manual is designed, anyone can clearly establish your brands look and feel and implement that into further work. But what is necessary in include in your brand guide?
One of the key things to include is your brand overview. This includes your mission and vision, tagline, personality and your history. Next it is essential to include your logo. Everything from your usage, placement, versions, unacceptable applications and modifications should be included so that whoever is reading it. Other parts that should be included in your brands typography, colors for print and web, all imagery used (icons, symbols, stock and/or custom photography, graphics, and illustrations), your brands voice (the writing style used by your company), and finish with visual examples of work to help to establish a baseline for future designs.
Lets look at some famous and great examples of brand guidelines:
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| Nike Pro Services |
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| Bing |
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| Fandango |
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| American Red Cross |
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| Skype-Click to View the Whole Guide |
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| ESPN |
Every main brand has a brand guideline. As I said, it is so essential to include when you are having your brand's identity created. Even if you are a small business, the usefulness is endless. Most small businesses go from one designer to another due to financial resources, but the inclusion of the brand guideline will help the new designer to consistently design to your brand.
What do you think? Do you think the brand guideline is essential?
WOW i loved your post! To add to your bottom statement, every brand, not just the main brands, have brand guidelines so that they can project the same message across all business activities. Thanks for the good read!
ReplyDeleteYou are correct, every brand should have brand guidelines, but unfortunately small businesses tend to not have them because it is an extra cost over your logo when you have an independent designer. This is why using a agency will help you, because they typically include the guideline with the branding service they offer.
DeleteThis article is awesome. I love the idea you are discussing with minimalism. It seems as though with the rise of the economy over the years, mass advertising has began to get cluttered. For consumers it was tough to take in everything that was being thrown at them. The idea of minimalism has really changed the customers perspective on the way companies advertise and what causes them to purchase.
ReplyDeleteConnor, thanks for the comment. You are right on, minimalism has helped to eliminate the cutter issue in a lot of ads.
DeleteThere are so many graphic design elements to creating brand guidelines. For that reason, I think you explained it better than I could and I really enjoyed this post. I also really liked your examples.
ReplyDelete