How well are your brand guidelines guiding you?
Building a memorable brand is all about consistency. In this episode, we explore the dos and don’ts for creating a set of brand guidelines that ensure consistency across every touch point of your brand.
Good morning, my name is Kiri, I’m the Business Growth Strategist here at Tiny Hunter. I’ve been having a lot of conversations with potential clients recently about their brand guidelines and their frustrations over the lack of guidance that they’re providing for their team. A really good set of brand guidelines needs to be comprehensive enough that anybody can pick them up and roll out your brand consistently. However, what I’m hearing is that these guidelines are too complex and they are confusing or they’re too light on and lacking direction. And as a result, their brand is a bit of a mess.
What is it that makes a set of brand guidelines really effective? Firstly, they need to capture all the visual elements that make up your brand’s identity and they should provide clear and comprehensive instructions for how to use these elements across all your brand touch points. They also need to consider your tone of voice, and they should have examples for how this tone sounds differently in different situations. Your brand guidelines need to include your physical and your digital elements. So not just how your brand looks, but how does it sound? How does it move? They need to be informative without being overwhelming because if they’re too complex, then they’re going to cause confusion. It’s about finding that right balance. Your brand guidelines only need to cover the scope of your brand and as your brand grows and expands, so too should your brand guidelines. We see brand guidelines as a living and breathing thing that expand as your brand does.
I want you to review your brand guidelines this week, hopefully you have a set, and ask yourself, do they include all the visual and verbal elements of my brand? And are there clear instructions that are guiding our team around how to use these elements across all our touch points. Have you recently expanded your touchpoints? Perhaps you’ve added animation or a brand film? And you haven’t yet included that into your brand guidelines. Remember to keep updating your brand guidelines as your brand grows. If you don’t have the right skill set to really nail this part of your brand, then seek expertise because building a memorable brand is all about consistency. That’s it from me, it’s time for brekkie.
Written by: Kiri White
Published: March 15, 2023