The Importance of Brand Guidelines
Using Your Brand Guidelines to Create Consistency
According to Forbes, “Consistent brand presentation across all platforms increases revenue by up to 23 percent.” Look at it this way: anywhere a potential client finds your business online, they are immediately told a story through visuals. Those visuals can convey professionalism, tidiness, trustworthiness, personality, vibe, and, most importantly, feeling all in 50 milliseconds (see my Instagram post about what SWEOR found in 2020!) That gives people a lot of information about you and your business right off the bat. So how do we make sure that visual storytelling is solid and consistent? By utilizing Brand Guidelines!
Think of your Brand Guidelines as the “when to use what, where to use it, and how to use it” of your new brand. Brand Guidelines are your go-to rulebook for implementing all of the fresh new fonts, colors, logos, icons, and beyond! This ensures that anything new you create for your business, from social media graphics to proposals to emails, can:
Stay on-brand and look beautiful
Preserve your new brand’s integrity
Maintain this new caliber we’ve reached for your brand
All while increasing revenue by up to 23%? Wooohoooo!
Here’s what you can expect in your Brand Guidelines:
1. Messaging
We want to lay out the main story behind your business that we want these visuals to convey. What are you known for? What makes you different, and how does your visual messaging represent that?
2. Assets
Assets include all of your Primary Logos, Secondary Logos, Brand Marks, Icons, Illustrations and beyond. The guidelines will outline which is which, what to do, and what NOT to do with each.
3. Color Palette
You’ll also find your color palette with any of the codes you may need to use them yourself! The most commonly used codes are usually HEX codes, which you can drop in programs like Canva, Google Drive, and Illustrator to match your brand colors exactly.
4. Typography
Your typography includes all of your brand fonts. Your Brand Guidelines should lay out which fonts to use when it comes to Headings, Subheadings, Body Text, and Calls to Action. Maintaining this hierarchy is something I see most businesses missing that could make a world of a difference!
Presenting a brand across platforms consistently increases your ability to leave customers with a feeling. In the words of Seth Godin, “People do not buy goods and services. They buy stories, relations, and magic”.
The phrase “consistency is key” has never been more true!
