Generally speaking, every brand should have guidelines in some form. A company’s brand is reflected in not only their logo and colour palette but also the copywriting style within their website and other marketing material.
As a business, your brand has to be consistent and recognisable in order to build trust with customers and become successful.
What are brand guidelines?
Brand guidelines in simple terms is a set of instructions that denotes the correct way to apply the brand across a variety of applications such as their website, stationery or any marketing collateral.
What should be included in your brand guidelines?
The contents of your companies brand guidelines will vary dependant on the size of your company and what is relevant to your brand. Here a some of the basic elements that should be included in your brand guidelines:
- Brand message or mission statement
- Logo rules and usage
- Brand colours
- Typography
Other elements you may want to include:
- Signage specifications
- Copywriting style (a.k.a. “tone of voice”)
- Templates for stationery
- Positioning, size and clear space
- Imagery and Photography
There are no set elements you have to include in your brand guidelines, but the more you set, the more consistently your brand will be expressed. Ideally, your guidelines should be flexible enough for designers to be creative, but stringent enough to keep your brand easily recognizable.
With all this in mind, you should still remember that brand guidelines can be adjusted as your business grows and as you discover which elements are relevant to your product or service.
We have created brand guidelines for many start up and existing companies and have plenty of experience in creating distinct branding for a wide range of companies. If you would like us to create or adjust your companies brand guidelines, please get in touch and our branding team will be happy to advise in helping your business to stand out from the crowd and become instantly recognisable.