Company Hydeline by KOLORO
Competent branding increases company recognition. However, successful branding is impossible without systematizing all the information about its identity. A brand guideline is a set of corporate documents, a set of rules for the correct use of corporate identity elements. Creating a guideline helps brand executives, designers and marketers have a clear understanding of the application of brand identity elements.
What is a guideline: the difference between a brandbook and a guideline
Quite often modern marketers identify the concept of a brandbook and a guideline. A brandbook is a document that contains key concepts about a brand such as its mission, goals, and philosophy. First of all, the brandbook is important for the employees of the company who have to move towards a common goal. At this time, the guideline is not an internal corporate document, it standardizes the work with visual brand symbols.
Features of using a brand guideline
Depending on the goals and scope of the company, the guideline can be part of the brandbook or act as a stand-alone document.
A small firm does not need to prescribe the rules of brand identity placement on various media, except for the main ones (business card, pens). Therefore, they can order the guideline as part of the brandbook. However, large corporations, especially those that operate franchises and have many different carriers of corporate identity (uniforms, transportation, signage), should have more detailed guidelines. In that case, they order the guideline as a separate document that will arrive in the hands of layout and design staff. They are the ones who will be in charge of placing the visual elements on the media.
When a company redesigns, there is no need to develop a new brandbook, as the company’s mission has not changed. However, redesign implies changing the main communicating elements of the brand (logo, signature color combination, character). The new rules for using these elements need to be described in the guideline by issuing a fresh version.
Brand Identity Mohawk by Pentagram
Why develop a brand guideline?
The users of the guideline are the design and marketing professionals in the company. According to renowned designer Alina Wheeler, developing a guideline helps to “save time, money and frustration”. A situation familiar to many companies – a new designer running around the office trying to find out the CMYK colors of the logo. Hydeline helps the brand to successfully cope with the solution of such problems, as well as solves application problems of the departments responsible for advertising and marketing.
Objectives of the development of the guideline
- Significantly simplifies further interaction with marketing agencies. It is enough to describe the overall vision of the marketing campaign and provide a guideline to the designers. You can be sure that all elements of the identity will be properly placed on the media, complying with the rules of their use.
- Control over the use of identifying elements allows marketers to be confident in the attractiveness of the company’s corporate identity on any media.
- Clearly defined rules of arrangement of elements (logo, company blog) and combination of colors guarantees uniformity of all brand media. This approach helps to increase brand trust and awareness.
Brand identity carriers MTrading
4. Guideline necessarily contains examples of how “not to do”: how not to place the logo, examples of unsuccessful color solutions, etc. This limits the marketers’ freedom of action and ensures that any elements are designed correctly
What the guideline includes
The development of a guideline is the compilation of clear rules for the use of identifying elements with the following structure.
- Description of the brand constants (logo, color, color combination, fonts) for which rules are drawn up for their scaling and application depending on the location on the media, as well as the application environment.
- Versions of the construction of the logo and its security zone, variations of the logo in color, monochrome or b/w, depending on the brightness of the background, as well as unacceptable variations of the logo.
- Brand block (mutual arrangement of elements) and brand colors (combinations and shades).
- Business documentation (design and applications).
- General principles of creating layouts.
- Principles of design and layout of printing products, outdoor advertising, POS-materials.
- Souvenirs, uniforms, transportation, etc.
The following are examples of large companies’ guidelines.
Description of the company’s primary colors CISCO
The entire CISCO brand book CISCO here
Unacceptable examples of use of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics logo
The entire event brandbook is here
Examples of using graphic elements Thao Cam Vien Saigon
The entire zoo brandbook is here
Hydeline: the cost of developing a standard
The cost of developing a guideline depends on the following factors.
- Scale of the company – if its operations extend beyond a single region, the guideline includes more sections to coordinate cross-regional marketing activities.
- The number of brand elements (for example, a small company may only need instructions on how to use the logo, fonts and color combinations on business documents).
- Need to develop layouts and design templates for printing products, etc.
For each company, the cost of the service is determined after consultation and assessment of the scope of work.
Contact us by phone and we will advise you about our guideline creation service for free!
