Time to Reflect: Creating Brand Guidelines.

Every company has a public identity and keeping it focused and coherent is important when aiming for success. Fortunately, brand guidelines help a business to solidify their message and ensure that any marketing collateral tells a consistent story. Guidelines are essentially rules that set the look, feel and overall style of a company’s brand. Whether it’s the colour scheme used throughout online and print materials, how a logo should sit or the format of blogs for example, effective guidelines help a business to achieve continuity. Showing audiences what they can expect from a brand. During the process of creating brand guidelines, there are a few key elements that need to be considered in order to be successful. 

If you would like your business to have a more consistent appearance, then The New Fat can help. Here are our tips to ensure you tick all the boxes. 

Create a skeleton, or outline, for your guidelines

Establishing a clear and distinct style for your brand can seem like an upward battle at the best of times. If you’re struggling to see the woods for the trees, creating an outline for your brand guidelines can help. Our advice, focus on essential elements specific to your business. Your essential elements should include: logo, brand story, colour palette, typography, tone of voice and imagery. After you’ve established these elements, you can also think about additional information that is completely unique to your brand. If you’re finding it difficult our team can help.

Make your brand’s voice heard 

When establishing a business two of the most important questions you need to ask yourself are: what do you want to say? and how do you want to say it? There’s no denying that your brand voice matters. It is what consumers buy into and what prospective partners use to consider whether your ethos aligns with theirs. Highlighting tone of voice in your brand guidelines is fundamental and can be done in several ways. You might want to pick a handful of adjectives that really get to the heart of who you are as a business. You might describe yourselves as fun, professional, inclusive, straight-talking or even eccentric. Or consider including a ‘words we like and don’t like’ section to illustrate the voice you want to maintain. Every business has a unique way of speaking to their audience. Establish yours and leave The New Fat to get it across clearly. 

Get specific about your logo 

There really is no getting away from the importance of a logo. They convey character and competence and are often the first preconception of a brand. Logos provide instant recognition and therefore need clear instructions. This needs to include how your logo should be displayed; landscape, portrait, with or without a strapline. Also set clear size restrictions, minimum use and safe space. Display clear rules on how colours should be used and if and when your logo should sit on coloured, textured or photographic backgrounds. We also provide examples of how your logo really shouldn’t be displayed, for example, stretched out of recognition! The aim here is to have your logo consistently and clearly displayed. As well as showing how it should be look, as a rule of thumb most design agencies also set out logo don’ts. Don’t stretch, squash or don’t change colours for example.

Aim to create a living, breathing document 

Remember that your brand guidelines shouldn’t be rigid, but instead consider the fact that all brands are likely to evolve. View your brand guidelines as a foundation that your business can be added to over time. You’ll probably want to look back over your brand guidelines periodically and consider whether you need to add to or amend them, something The New Fat can also help with. There are also some key milestones that would warrant reviewing and altering your brand guidelines including launching a new product or if you are keen to redesign your website. 

Spread the word 

A set of brand guidelines mean nothing if they are not distributed well across a company and used effectively by those able to make use of them. Circulate to relevant colleagues and ensure that you have considered conversations during staff meetings and briefings about how people can use them effectively. Remember to also make colleagues aware that they need to monitor the media (which might include print, radio, social media and email marketing) to ensure that your brand guidelines and being used correctly. Staff can refer to the guidelines to help ensure that any incorrect usage is flagged right away. 

Need help creating usable, effective brand guidelines for your business? Get in touch today.