One of the biggest, and often most overlooked things - Your Brand Guidelines
It is a trend in the blogs we have been writing lately, that you need to have a plan for every facet of your business when you are running a company. One of the biggest, and often most overlooked things you need to account for are your brand guidelines.
The first question that you may ask here is, what IS a set of brand guidelines? Sometimes this can also be referred to as a brand style guide – and it is pretty much an instruction manual and “rule book” for your business to follow when communicating your brand to your audience. It will help provide you direction with everything you do moving forward with your business. A set of brand guidelines lays out all the visual details, key notes about your company’s voice and tone, as well as the messaging that is reflected by these details. They will influence communications, what products and/or services you offer, how your creative is executed, and who you sell to. This comes in the form of either a physical or digital booklet, outlining these items to help you focus on the trajectory of your messaging.
Brand guidelines comprehensively cover a company’s brand identity, which includes the following:
- Logos: full logos, secondary logos, icons, etc.
- Color palette: primary and secondary colors, CMYK/HEX/Pantone colour codes
- Typography: font families, styles, sizes, spacing
- Other imagery: photos, illustrations, key artwork, backgrounds
- Voice and tone: how the brand uses language and emotion
- Values: what the brand stands for (and sometimes what it doesn’t)
- Mission: your elevator pitch will stay consistent when you bid for new projects
When a company invests the time and money into creating a proper set of brand guidelines, it helps to ensure that their brand – their image, persona and tone – stays consistent no matter where it shows up.
There is absolutely no doubt that this will pay off big time in the long run for your ROI as your company will create familiarity and trust, which makes your business be seen as reliable and consistent. In turn, this trust will open the doors to brand loyalty from your prospective clients.
Kleurvision has taken great pride in not only the development and implementation of our own brand guidelines, but with helping various clients of ours either rebrand their existing company’s look and feel or start from scratch with new companies and startups.
Want to connect? We are always happy to chat about anything brand! Let’s get you started on the right foot in 2021 with regards to your brand standardization!
