Brand guidelines documents: Does your business need them?
We will provide a discussion about the value of brand guidelines documents.
Brand guidelines documents: Does your business need them?
It’s true that brand guidelines should form an integral part of your business growth strategy. But what on earth are they?
Also known as brand design guidelines or branding style guides, they become a master reference whenever you and your employees make key marketing or design decisions or communicate with the public via the written word.
Keen to know more?
This brand guidelines introductory article is here to tell you:
- What are brand guidelines?
- Why are brand guidelines important?
- Why is brand consistency important?
- What to include in brand guidelines?
- Brand guidelines examples
- How to design brand guidelines.
As an award-winning creative agency, we hope you will find the following advice valuable.
What are brand guidelines?
Brand design guidelines define a common design or written language (with practical examples) showing employees and third-party suppliers how your business should be represented.
Typically, branding guidelines are available in digital and printed formats. This allows you to distribute copies to anyone who may represent, design for, or speak for your brand in writing. They cover a range of areas which we will explore below.
Why are brand guidelines important?
The importance of brand guidelines lies in their transparency. Good branding style guides will not confuse or be subjective, allowing you and your team to all work from the same master resource.
Here are a trio of reasons why brand guidelines matter to businesses of all sizes.
1. You will save time
We know what many solopreneurs or small businesses are thinking. They wonder whether their business can justify having a professional brand style guide created.
However, your comprehensive new style guide will save your valuable time, being on hand to remind you of how you prefer to design a WordPress website, infographic or social media banner. It also guides your writing when emailing, writing a blog or newsletter, alongside press releases.
2. It can help you scale
Even if you have a superb memory, you can save weeks of painstaking training and back-and-forth emailing (or video calling) once you have a bespoke style guide agreed.
It will make it far easier to pass on your brand’s signature to:
- Web designers
- Copywriters
- Social media writers
- Printing companies
- Employees
- Apprentices.
This time-saving benefit will free your focus to concentrate on what you need to do when growing your company or organisation.
3. Consistency matters
You may have previously struggled to be consistent within your writing when it comes to the tone, punctuation and formatting of fonts and typography. Equally, you should be using the same hexcode for consistent colours.
Having brand guidelines speeds up this process and can even reassure your clients or customers, as we will explain next.
Why is brand consistency important?
Brand consistency is a vital part of brand building today. Imagine that you are looking for a birthday gift for a loved one or friend. You have seen an ad on Facebook or Instagram and click through to the site, but something ‘feels off’ once you browse their web pages. It is like you have arrived at a different business’ ecommerce store. Would you continue shopping there if the brand was previously unknown to you? Perhaps not.
On the other hand, cohesive brand guidelines customised for your business will prove their usefulness in three ways:
- It builds confidence among consumers/clients who research your company.
- Having a recognisable design and written content builds trust throughout the sales funnel process.
- Your brand will be perceived as polished and professional, helping it to secure leads and sales.
After all, financial gains, more enquiries and positive PR are never bad outcomes.
A word from BT
Similarly, Marketing Week stresses the need for consistency, with an article detailing insights from BT’s Head of Brand Language. Their expert said, “When there’s a consistent tone of voice throughout a company – from the marketing, to the call centres, to the letters – consumers feel more at ease with your product”. The same applies to visual designs.
What to include in brand guidelines
This may vary depending on the needs of your company, but the things to include in brand guides can feature:
- Brand colours
- Font size and name
- Logo presentation notes
- Preferred visual design hierarchy
- How to talk to customers or clients.
Brand guidelines examples
Stuck for inspiration for creating your business brand guidelines?
Search online for ‘brand guidelines’ and you will notice just how many large businesses have published their designer brand guidelines online. Three examples of this brand consistency (past and present) include:
Alternatively, the designated portfolio section of our website includes similar projects for clients we have supported (including the image below).
How to design brand guidelines
It may seem overwhelming having to make these decisions in a short amount of time, especially given the benefits of having style brand guidelines. You could spend multiple days brainstorming ideas and looking at several blogs before indecision and brain fatigue strike.
Yet, our experienced agency, thefingerprint, is here to take away the hassle if you aren’t a natural web designer or writer and want experienced support for this specialised service.
What could brand guidelines deliver for you?
From unique branding and brand consistency to efficient teamwork and lead generation, we think you will agree that brand style guidelines are a worthwhile investment.
Hoping to learn more about this branding service? Call +44 (0) 7740348521 or contact us for a no-obligation chat.
If you are enjoying this article, please read our blogs 10 Brand guidelines to maintain brand consistency, 6 Important company rebranding lessons to consider or What to call your company/brand?.