Brand Guidelines

We scroll mindlessly past hundreds of messages every single day and only remember a fraction of what we see. Your customers are the same. They’re speed reading articles, scanning emails, and making their way through their favourite apps fast, often without thinking about who is feeding them the content they see.

The effect of the fast-paced online world is most prevalent on social media. Even if your post is memorable, only 43% of social media users will recall that your brand was the one behind the post.

So how do you stop users in their tracks and get them to truly listen? A great brand guide can be your red light. Here’s what you need to know to create your own.

What are brand guidelines?

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Brand guidelines are clearly defined rules and standards that communicate how your brand should be represented to the world. Brand guidelines help businesses ensure brand consistency and demonstrate what the company is, what it does, and what it stands for. Think of it like a brand ‘rulebook’ that centralizes the overall look and feel of your brand identity.

These specifications enable everyone involved in promoting your business to communicate consistently about its mission, principles, and personality. Your branding guidelines consolidate the elements that you want all of your stakeholders to use in representing your brand’s image.

What should brand guidelines include?

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There are common elements that brand guidelines should include to help you and your team ensure consistency throughout your marketing efforts. Here are some of the most important pieces of information to highlight in your brand guidelines:

• Company information: Details of your brand’s history, mission, values, and vision.

• Imagery: Icons, image design elements, and photo types that are to be used.

• Logo design and use: Guidelines on logo usage, including color palette, file format(s), minimum and maximum sizes, contexts, spacing, and usage permissions, such as where images should and shouldn’t appear.

• Tone and grammar: Instructions on tone of voice and grammar rules.

• Cards and letterheads: Template for business card and letterhead designs.

• Fonts: Font styles and text sizes for both print and digital media.

• Color palette: Color palette information, including CMYK and RGB codes. 

Effective brand guidelines are those that can be shared and understood easily by anyone involved in communicating your brand—both internally and externally.

That’s why it’s advisable that they should be concise, easy to read, and digitally accessible.