What is a brand book and why is it important?
A brand book is also referred to as a brand guideline or style guide.
The primary reason for having a brand book for any company, is to maintain a consistent visual look and feel in all communications. Every designer, marketer or communications professional will present their ideas differently. There is nothing wrong with a variety of these ideas, but a brand needs to differentiate itself from its competition. Opposing design styles and communication approaches will make the brand appear confused in the eyes of the consumer. Worse, it may water down any earned value, identity and perception.
A style guide explains how any brand functions and what its objectives are, and must cover two approaches of corporate identity: visual school of identity; and the strategic school of identity.
Under the first approach, the visual or tangible aspects of an organisation or individual i.e. the name, logo and general architecture are defined. In the second scenario, the ideas behind the organisation such as values, vision and mission statements are outlined. This assists brand managers to align their brand books to the overall organisational strategy and image.
Having a brand book ensures that all marketing communication visual aids have a common outlook promoting the ‘big idea’. Here is an example of a brand book from Coca Cola.
Purposes of a Brand Book
- Improves and maintains your brand position
- Keeps your whole team on the message
- Adds depth to your brand position by aligning it with your business strategy.
- Useful for new employees. It helps them get a grasp of the brand rules and aspirations much quicker.
Components of a brand book
It is critical to consider having balanced guidelines. Creativity should be at the fore, pushing the envelope but maintaining key standards throughout.
Introduction:
Give an introduction of the story behind your brand and how its visual identity has developed over time. Has the company changed its visual identity in the past? If so, how has the evolution been to the current visual identity elements? These are some of the pertinent questions a brand manager needs to address in this section of a brand book.
Logo Guideline:
The Logo is the most important element in a brand’s visual identity. Without proper guidelines on its correct usage, it may be stretched, resized or recoloured in a variety of wrong ways. When a logo becomes distorted or deformed due to incorrect application, misrepresentation of the brand occurs.
Colour palettes:
Each brand has colors that are associated with it. For example, Coca Cola is associated with red, Skype, Facebook are associated with blue, apple is associated with black/white/grey and so on.
Brand books should clearly dictate which colours should be used to keep the brand identity. This involves defining different color schemes for different end users. For instance, what colour codes apply when printing branded collateral? What are the color for digital press and so on. Colour is therefore a crucial aspect in branding as it sets the visual tone or mood of any brand. You can learn more on colour combinations by reading colour theory for designers.
Typeface:
Like colours, every brand has its own set of typefaces (fonts) which are used on all online and offline communications. The rule of thumb among most designers is to select a combination of not more than two or three typefaces. Where one typeface family can be used, the better. However, combining typefaces requires you to have an understanding of the different typefaces and their principles. Different fonts project different ‘feels’ and as a brand manager or creative professional, you need to thoroughly think it through.
Taglines:
Taglines are also referred to as slogans. Companies mix logos with taglines to communicate what the brand is about, who is their target market or which products/services they offer. Slogans are kept for using in specific campaigns, attached to email signatures or used in tv or radio advertisements.
Photos and infographics:
Generally it is important to pay attention to the mood of photos/images that an organization shall be using. Quality of photos must align with the brand core values and brand story. In the guidelines, one needs to outline the parameters/requirements or Dos and Don’ts that are acceptable and have some few examples.
Page structures:
You may think that it’s just about a company’s website, but it goes further than that. There are many brands that require that their brochures be tri-fold or that all adverts be comprised of thirds: one-third text and two-thirds images. So, make sure to write information about the page structures in your brand book as well.
Dos and Don’ts:
Dos and don’ts is a great section that is present in many brand books. It is a part that explains what you should do and should not do with the visual elements i.e. logo, fonts, images and all brand architecture.
Brand Tone
Tone simply means the personality of your brand. In other words it is the impression or perception that you want your brand to convey when interacting with people. Good messaging takes your competitive positioning and brand strategy to the next level. The tone of the brand should consider the target audience, channel preference among other factors as these have an impact on how your communication is received.
Your brand tone can manifest in your:
- Brand’s elevator pitch
- Positioning statement
- Vision and mission statements
- Tagline and slogan
- Press releases
- Social media communication
- Blog posts and articles
- Choice of communication style – via email, phone or face to face
Designing an Effective Brand Book
Decide for whom you create a brand book:
Before creating a brand book, you should clearly identify who the end user is going to be: who is receiving, reading and using the style guide?. It’s really important to know your target audience, so you can tailor your content accordingly. For example, if you are going to distribute it outside of your team, make sure to not use any jargon or technical knowledge that would be difficult for others to understand. Write with friendly, simple and clear language that will attract and engage the audience.
Keep it simple:
Brand books need to be easily understood and interpreted by different groups of people: your employees, your partners, customers and even competitors.
Think in a creative way:
They should express the brand’s creativity. If you have created a new brand book after a re-branding exercise, all communication channels and materials need to be updated promptly. For instance, if you have a new logo, then you should change it in all websites, social networks, email footers, presentations, documents and so on. Thus, a creative needs o visualize different applications of brand elements on all interaction points and ensure they fit seamlessly across platforms.
Design the book in your brand style:
The brand book should truly be the representative of your company, its culture and style of working
Make your materials available:
To make sure that people won’t use old or wrong versions of your visual elements, make the guidelines readily available. This is easy in this digital era as the style guide may be posted on the official website or on other platforms like ISSUU.
Involve your staff:
A style guide ensures that For this purpose, create a project team consisting of employees from all levels in your company and ask regular feedback from them during brand guideline development.
Anticipate questions:
At the end of your brand book, make sure to include some relevant contacts and email addresses where you can receive questions and feedback regarding the guide.
Review your brand book regularly:
The main goal of brand books is to explain, advise and guide people to use and reproduce your brand. However, this does not necessarily mean that your brand is set in stone forever. Naturally, your brand will evolve and change over time, and your brand book should be revised and updated accordingly.
In conclusion, a brand book is an excellent tool for any organization. First it makes the work of Marketing/Brand Managers easier by helping them deal with all stakeholders. These include printing shops, consultants, media houses and even staff members. Second it saves creative designers precious time since they don’t have to come up with ‘new’ artworks every time. They can therefore easily ensure that a consistent visual outlook is maintained in all campaigns. Finally a style guide ensures that as an organization your brand stands out from the information ‘clutter’.