What Should Be Included In Brand Guidelines?
Brand guidelines, in simple terms, are a document that is used to specify what your brand is and the in depth details on how your brand should be represented. Once created, they should be available to anyone within your company so they can refer to them if needed. When creating brand guidelines, there are many different areas to cover. In this article, you’ll find out what you need to include and why they are important for your business.
Why do you need Brand Guidelines?
Brand guidelines are essential for any business, no matter how big or small you are. They can help everyone in the company be on the same page so whenever you realise new marketing materials, they are consistent and represent the company properly. If brand guidelines are set up correctly, they should cover every aspect of branding from logo design to social media. Even though this might seem like a lot of work, branding is so important to get right as it acts as the face to your company.
Logo Design
One of the first things that should be discussed in your brand guidelines, is your logo design. Within this section, you need to discuss what your logo will look like most of the time and any variations that may occur. So your logo shouldn’t really change and should be a specific size and colour. This is something you would include in the brand guidelines. On the other hand, there might be certain occasions where your logo differs slightly. This could happen when the logo is reversed, changed to a single colour or adapted for responsive design. This will also need to be specified within the guidelines so people know the options that are available.
Typography
Typography is another huge part in branding. This focuses on the font, headings, sub headings and paragraphs. The brand guidelines should specify what font is used for different areas of content and also the size of the different sections such as headings and body text. This will be useful when it comes to creating your website and marketing materials such as brochures, leaflets and packaging design.
Imagery
Imagery is another section needed in brand guidelines. Every business has a certain way they want to appear to their customers and the images that you use will help you to do that. Whether you want to go for the more realistic photography or if you like the more custom graphic approach. Within the imagery section of the brand guidelines, you will need to discuss what kind of images are appropriate, any specific colours or styling and potentially the layout of images when being used with text.
Social Media
Finally, we move onto how social media can play a part in your brand guidelines. Social media and branding work hand in hand and are the perfect combination when marketing your brand identity online. When working on social media accounts, you need to think about how you want your pages to look like, what colours can be used, what wording is suitable for the posts and how you want the branding to appear on social graphics.
We understand that creating a brand identity for your business might be daunting but luckily for you, we’re here to help! Head over to our website to find out more: https://www.bluewhalemedia.co.uk/marketing/website-branding/
