It’s likely you’ve spent a great deal of time developing your website, creating the perfect message and building the perfect marketing strategy for your business, after all these are important elements to helping your business stand out, letting you build a brand that has an impact on your industry and your customers.
However if you’re unwilling to keep this consistent, keeping your graphics, message, logo and colours all in keeping with the same style you can cause yourself some problems, making your hard work with building your brand completely redundant and potentially causing your audience to doubt the consistency of your business as a whole.
This is why creating brand guidelines is so important, they allow you to document exactly how your branding elements, such as your logo, your colours and your fonts, are used within your website and marketing materials. Your guidelines act as just that, a flexible guide that helps your business maintain your personality and consistency.
Why Do You Need Brand Guidelines?
Every business has it’s own brand, even if they don’t realise it, but failing to have guidelines that define this brand and keep it consistent, it becomes very difficult to maintain a specific image, which is recognisable and stand out amongst your competition.
In order for your brand to be effective it needs to stay consistent, for example sticking to the same colours and keeping your logo the same throughout, your brand guidelines allow you to determine how you can use these elements in a way that keeps your marketing materials in keeping with your brand. Consistency is an important element when it comes to maintaining a strong brand, keeping everything similar in tone and design and ultimately making your brand more recognisable.
Without brand guidelines there’s no material out there that can help with building your brand, design and marketing materials, which means time can be wasted on designing or redesigning items that go off in their own direction and don’t fit in with your overall branding.
What’s Included In Your Brand Guidelines?
Since no brand is exactly the same, your brand guidelines will differ completely to others, however it’s likely they will follow a similar pattern and should include these three common elements.
– Your Colour Palette
If you’re wanting to stick to specific colours when it comes to your brand, your brand guidelines should document all the colours you’re wanting to use and only those colours, including the hex code and CMYK codes, making it easier to use the exact same colours consistently.
– Your Fonts
You should also aim to include all fonts and typography that’s associated with your brand within your guidelines, including the various typefaces and families that are included. This allows you to keep track of what fonts are used, so you don’t resort to a mish-mash of fonts.
– Versions Of Your Logo
It’s also important to include your logo design and any variations of this logo within your brand guidelines, showing how they should be used throughout your marketing materials. By including all variations of your logo you can have a solid idea of every option you have, rather than making it up as you go along.
Without brand guidelines it can be difficult to keep your brand consistent, in order to build and maintain a powerful and recognisable brand then brand guidelines are the way forward for your business.
If you’re a new business looking to build your brand or simply an established business looking to rebrand then you need a team who can help you with every step, from your logo design to your brand guidelines. Why not speak to our team today and get started with establishing your business as a solid brand!
