Your company’s brand is its most important asset. It sets you apart from the competition and helps your customers identify you. Protect and make your brand stronger by developing a brand style guide.
Brand guidelines are comprehensive rules defining the overall look and feel of your company’s branding. This document sets the standards for employees and designers when creating marketing pieces such as advertisements, brochures, newsletters and online communications. By providing a branding guide, you will achieve cohesiveness within your brand.
“Creating consistency through a brand style guide helps maintain an aspect of professionalism.” says Cortney Erndt, director of marketing at Shoreline Creative, a creative studio offering innovative marketing solutions for niche brands. “Consistency in marketing collateral increases brand recognition, helping customers recall your brand better in the future.”
Basic branding guides contain sections on color palette, logo design and typography. The color palette specifies your company’s visual objectives. The guide should identify each color code by CMYK, for print, HEX for web and RBG for digital. The codes help identify the exact shades and hues to retain consistency. Color codes can be identified through photo apps such as Ginifab or Imagecolorpicker.com.
Defining the logo design is more than identifying the color codes used to create the logo. The brand guide should also include the amount of spacing around the logo, size minimum and maximum, and acceptable backgrounds. Providing examples of incorrect usage helps ensure that logos are applied consistently further protecting your brand.
Typography refers to the acceptable fonts used for printed communications, including emails, social media and website designs. Your company branding guide should include font weights and identify font sizes for titles, headers and body text.
More complex guides include sections dedicated to developing your brand identity. Outlining your company goals or mission statement, imagery style, buyer persona and tone, all provide a more comprehensive brand guide.
Following a brand guide helps clarify what your business stands for through consistent messaging and visual identity. Shoreline Creative can help you create imaginative marketing that is unified and seamless across all communication channels.
Shoreline Creative
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