Everything you need to know about brand guidelines - Part 2

Have you ever wondered how some of the greatest brands in the world manage to be consistent over the years and decades?

The people in the company might change, the messaging might evolve with trends and time, but the core spirit of the brand is constant.

This is due to a not-so-little something called brand guidelines.

We have already seen some of why brand guidelines are important and how they add value to your business in the previous article. In this one, we shall focus on some technical aspects of brand guidelines, i.e., – what are the elements of brand guidelines, how should your employees and fans be following these guidelines, and more.

So, let’s get right into it, starting with…

The Principal Elements of Brand Guidelines

1. Brand Logo

Your logo is the face of your company, and hence, the most important component of your brand guideline. This is what people are going to know you by, and once it stands out in the market, you don’t need anything else to be identified. That’s the power of your brand logo.

Logos can be something as simple as a checkmark or something as complex as a mermaid (bonus points if you guessed which ones I’m talking about), they may contain the initials of your brand name or be something completely unrelated, they may have a single version or multiple ones depending on where they are used, that’s up to you.

However, there are some common guidelines that all logos follow, and you should too.

Always remember,

– Simple and clutter-less is the best

– It should reflect your core brand value

– The logo should be scalable

– There should be a balance between the color,
size, and graphic of the logo

– The aim of the logo is to represent your brand

Here are a few examples of how well-known brands have implemented these principles in their logos.

Let’s look at the global coffee giant, Starbucks. The Starbucks logo – a green mermaid – has a unique design and is recognized worldwide. There’s an interesting backstory as to why they chose to represent a coffee-chain with a seemingly unrelated creature from mythology.

The name ‘Starbuck’ is taken from the character in Herman Melville’s novel, ‘Moby-Dick’, where Starbuck is the chief mate on the ship Pequod. Since the name is taken from a novel that speaks about journeying at sea, the initial logo of the company was the image of a twin-tailed mermaid or a siren, supposedly to lure the coffee lovers from everywhere. Over the years, though the logo has changed to a cleaner and more polished version, the mermaid icon has been maintained to symbolize its connection to its origin.

Currently, the shape of the logo is circular enclosing the mermaid and the color combination is deep green and white. The color symbolizes the freshness, uniqueness, growth, and prosperity of the brand. The previous font in the logo was very similar to Freight Sans Black but now the new design is void of fonts because of the brand’s firm belief that the mermaid is so recognizable worldwide that it does not need the distraction of words.

Another example is from our own portfolio, a logo created for the brand Da-sh, a bar-restaurant-lounge for Chennaiites, in one of Chennai’s prime locations, Old Madras Road.

Right from the start, Da-sh was set to be a blend of dynamism, comfort, joy, and excitement. At its heart, Da-sh was a place for the tired people with workaday jobs to chill, hang out, and grab some refreshing dinner and conversation, experience a surge from fatigue to fun in the blink of an eye.

To represent this transformation, we literally incorporated a dash(-) in their logo and two different fonts from the same font family everywhere in their branding, which would make the brand easily recognizable. It would convey the soul of the brand without giving away the whole vibe!

This point is especially crucial as quite often, business owners try to get designers and studios to create logos that are expected to convey their complete brand value in the logo itself, which is not always possible. You can convey the tone, your core ethos, and the vibe of your brand, but conveying your brand story is a job best left to your whole repertoire of brand touchpoints, one of which is your tagline.

2. Tagline

Your tagline is the perfect articulation of your brand promise. It is the sentence that captures your core brand values in a catchy and concise line. To be honest, there are no specific rules defined for coining taglines.

It can be classy or hip, it can be two words to a sentence, it can be confident or persuasive – the field is wide open. However it may be, it needs to be impactful, likable, descriptive, and most importantly – memorable. At the same time, it shouldn’t be complex or filled with technical jargon. Neither should it be intimidating or overwhelming.

Keep it simple, keep it clean, and keep it short. Take care that your tagline is not offensive or coarse in any way. The best taglines are those that evoke a positive emotion in people – happiness, curiosity, awe, elegance, want – which is in line with your brand voice.

3. Fonts, Sizes, and Typography

Typography is important for the brand as fonts help express the personality of the brand. Since each of the typefaces has its own unique characteristics, it helps convey a deeper symbolic meaning that is sometimes much larger than words. For instance, serif fonts are classic and traditional, sans serif fonts have an edgy, modern, contemporary feel that is clean and minimalistic.

If you find that none of the existing fonts resonate with your brand, you can opt to create a custom font that reflects your brand’s personality.

Case in point – Instagram. The Instagram logo font does not have the basic typeface which is used by most of the tech brands. This social media giant has used a script font i.e. a decorative hand-drawn style. This custom typeface has unbroken lines and is more of an artistic and fluid font.

The basic ideology is that the font should mirror the overall theme of the brand.
Font size matters in the brand design when it comes to creating the collaterals of the brand. Whether digital or print media, the font size should be such that it is clear and legible.

Your brand guideline should clearly define the font types, weights, and all the maximum and minimum permissible font sizes you are going to use in your digital and print assets, to ensure uniformity in presentation. And this is not just limited to your standard text, but also for headlines, and all sub-headings.

4. Colors

Colors are one of the first things that your audience registers when they see your brand and they are the most attention-grabbing asset of your logo. Eventually, people come to associate that color with your brand too. For instance, when someone says Facebook, you automatically see the blue color in your mind’s eye; if someone says Netflix, the red-on-black is branded in your mind.

That’s why choosing the right colors for your brand is so important. Color psychology defines how colors influence consumer emotion and behavior. Research shows that about 90% of people make snap judgments about a brand based on color. For instance, red is associated with warmth, excitement, energy, boldness, and is often associated with food-related brands – McDonald’s, KFC, Pizza Hut – all have elements of red; green is considered peaceful, healthy, and related to growth, and is often used by brands that have some connection to nature – such as Tropicana, Whole Foods, Starbucks; blue shows trust, dependability, and strength and is hence a favorite of many research and software-oriented companies like IBM, WordPress, Facebook, Dell, NASA, etc.

Having said that, these associations are not mandatory, they’re simply a guideline. There are several brands that do not adhere to the canon but instead choose to carve a different path.

The most recent example is that of Animal Planet, which changed its logo from green and font-centric to a silhouetted blue elephant that creates a strong, distinctive, and joyous symbol. In fact, personal preferences are also sometimes the deciding factor in choosing the brand color.

Your brand guideline is where you design your color palette, based on the values you want to build on.

5. Brand Positioning

Brand positioning, quite literally, is how you showcase the functional, emotional, experiential, and beneficial qualities of your brand to your customers. Too technical?
Let’s simplify that a bit.

Brand positioning is about establishing how you stand out from the crowd, in the niche you have chosen. And for a brand to succeed, this needs to be clearly defined in the brand guideline.

Every brand guideline has a brand positioning statement that answers these four questions-

– What is your target market?

– What is the category your product falls in?

– What is the one thing that differentiates you from your competition?

– How can your brand help the consumer achieve what they want to achieve?

The crisper the answers to these questions, the better your brand positioning.

However, make note that brand positioning is a double-edged sword. You need to do your market research really well and identify your target audience perfectly if you want to position your brand appropriately. Lack of research or brand positioning based on assumptions can lead you down the completely wrong road when it comes to brand recognition.

6. Imagery

Think of the time when you had the best pizza in your life. It could be at a popular pizza chain like Pizza Hut, or at some obscure place that only you and your friends know. Now, remember the taste of that pizza, the wonderful toppings, that creamy cheese, the delicious tang of sauces, the feel of the wooden bench, the smell of spices in the air… are you beginning to crave that pizza yet? (I know I am!)

That’s brand imagery for you – all the sensory associations a consumer has with the brand. Name notwithstanding, brand imagery includes all the tangible and intangible sensations that your users will associate with your brand – visual, auditory, olfactory, oral, and tactile.

Brand imagery is the source of creating an aesthetic experience for your brand in the mind of your consumer. It is what turns a product into a brand, an experience into a memory, and inspires brand loyalty.

Defining your brand imagery in the brand guidelines helps you to go one step ahead into the customer’s psyche and understand how your consumers will connect emotionally with your brand. It is what gives your brand its all-round personality.

7. Tone

If imagery is the interpretation of your brand’s aesthetic influence, the brand’s tone is the aural component that enhances it.

Let me give you an example. The other day, when I was browsing for stationery online, I found two diaries that looked similar in design, had nearly the same features, and almost the same price. I would have been hard-pressed to make a choice if it weren’t for the product descriptions.

If imagery is the interpretation of your brand’s aesthetic influence, the brand’s tone is the aural component that enhances it.

One brand had written a barebones description, that gave me next to no new information about the product. The other had a description to make a writer weep. It talked of how the product was inspired by a real-life incident, how the material was sourced from recycled paper, how it had made a difference in the lives of many other people. Towards the end, it didn’t just ask the reader to buy the product, it asked them to be a part of the change that the product was effecting. You can guess which one I decided to buy.

That’s the power of brand voice.

When it comes to branding, tone is everything.

The way you craft your messaging is a direct reflection of your brand and it is what gives your brand its dash of whimsy.

Your brand guideline helps you capture and revisit this tone time and again, to ensure that it is consistently maintained across all your marketing campaigns.

All the time. Every single time.

Having said that, these associations are not mandatory, they’re simply a guideline. There are several brands that do not adhere to the canon but instead choose to carve a different path.

Your brand guideline is where you design your color palette, based on the values you want to build on.

8. Preventing Misuse

Last, but definitely not the least, we address how brand guidelines should have steps in place to prevent misuse of your brand and brand assets. I don’t know about overseas, but here in India, local manufacturers run rampant under the names of ‘Abibas’, ‘Hike’, ‘Somy’, and many others. Once, I even saw a lunch bag titled ‘Upma’, that one was hilarious!

Jokes apart, these are some ways in which your brand assets, like your logo, or brand name, can be misused. In terms of digital branding, using logos without due credit, or in improper dimensions, or misspelled, is an infringement upon your intellectual property, for which you need to stay vigilant.

Skype illustrates this use of its brand assets wonderfully in its Brand Guidebook, specifying the colors, dimensions, and all permutations and combinations of their logos and taglines that marketers can use in their unique, quirky style.

Your own brand guideline needs to have these stipulations in place as well, to avoid brand misuse and ensure that your brand always represents what you stand for.

Towards the end

These are the 8 core elements of creating a brand guideline. I hope they have given you some useful insights into creating your own brand guideline and charting out the blueprint of your business.

Creating brand guidelines is no mean feat. It takes time, effort, and patience, and most importantly, lots of room to grow and evolve. Brand guidelines are like the mile markers on a highway. They keep you on track, yet give you the freedom to take the occasional meandering path through the woods.

Always leave yourself room to experiment, for that is how your brand is going to grow, just ensure that you stick to the brand guidelines so your experiment is along the same plane. Besides, you can always take the help of professional brand architects to effectively plan out your brand guidelines to make sure that they reflect your brand properly.

You might have noticed that so far, we have only been talking about a single brand. What about products that are under a brand umbrella, yet a brand in their own right? How do we define brand guidelines for these? What is their brand architecture(#newtermalert)? Well, we shall get to that in the next and closing blog of this trilogy on brand guidelines, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, if you have any questions related to creating your brand guideline, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and start the conversation!

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written by Shreesh Shankar