Does Your Brand Need Brand Guidelines?
Brands are funny things. Sometimes they get by on a logo and a dream, and others they use logos, typography, color palette to convey the all glorious “story”. I say that un-jokingly too, as story is quite literally what sells anything. It’s also worth noting that we’ve worked with all of the above, and have seen national brands that don’t even have guidelines (and… ahem, that’s a bad thing).
So first thing’s first, what are brand guidelines? Brand Guidelines are a set of foundational rules/standards that a brand visually and verbally goes by. They’re also known by many other names: brand book, brand style guide, the list goes on. For this case, please know we’re not talking about Brand Identity (that’s the visual logos, colors, typography, and voice), we’re specifically talking about the Guidelines - which are basically the unified set of rules of how Brand Identity are communicated across the brand and its partners.
Who needs Brand Guidelines?
We think a single simple question answers this: Does your brand work with outside vendors, contractors, service providers that connect with your brand on any basis? If the answer is yes, then you need brand guidelines. If the answer is no, then you might get by just fine without them.
What do Brand Guidelines do?
They unify your brand in a concise way for anyone who may need access to the visual or verbal representation of your brand. Need some examples? You’re in luck:
Work with Influencers? Brand Guidelines provide a quick overview to help the influencer understand your brand better, and even represent it better. (You’d be surprised how helpful these can be to an influencer.)
Work with contractors? Brand Guidelines give them a one-stop shop for all the tools they need to act as an appropriate extension of your brand.
Work with Marketing on ANY level? Brand Guidelines are CRUCIAL to ensuring any marketer, graphic designer, videographer, etc has a go-to guide for your brand.
The funny part about all of this?
Okay, well, it’s not funny, but it’s astonishing how many established brand teams don’t already have guidelines. We’ve worked with countless professional teams who already have the brand identity assets, but they’re just sitting in a random folder.
For a team like ours, that means we have to parse out the assets, or even search through them one-by-one to figure out what’s what and guess which one is correct for whichever use-case.
How can we help?
We envision a magical world where all brands have and use Brand Guidelines ✨
That' will absolutely never happen, BUT we can do our best to help align your brand with what it needs in a day-to-day environment. The amazing thing about Brand Guidelines is that they also unify your internal team. It’s a limitless tool that anyone can reference, use, or even share to get work for your brand done better.
Here at Expo 86 Design Co. we’re always looking for ways to make your brand more efficient and the brand story stronger. Brand Guidelines are just another great tool in that belt of your brand’s story.
