What Are Brand Guidelines?
So what are brand guidelines, and why are they important to have and furthermore, to abide by?
Think of brand guidelines, or style guides, as your branding source of truth, or a defined set of rules or standards for your brand identity and assets. At a basic level these outline what elements make up a brand’s visual identity, such as logo variations, color palette, and typography usage. At a more advanced level they can include specific direction on how elements should be used, and even contain dedicated sections establishing components like brand values, personality/tone, and photography direction.
What Are The Benefits of Brand Guidelines?
Regardless of what level of specificity, or how large or small the business, brand guidelines are key in helping a company maintain a controlled and positive overall brand image, and adhering to them can have a number of benefits over time. Here are just a few of those benefits:
Consistency
First and foremost, the role of brand guidelines are to ensure you are sharing consistent, on-brand messaging and visuals for your audience.
Customers respond well to consistency, and it is a key factor in helping your brand appear reliable and recognizable to an audience.
Recognizability
When there is an absence of or deviations from brand guidelines in branding, confusion about who you are as a business can occur, which can hinder recognizability.
Building a recognizable brand takes time, but through a strategically crafted brand identity and consistent adherence to brand guidelines, it is possible.
Perceived Value
When a business displays a cohesive brand identity, it promotes quality and professionalism and thus increases the perceived value of a business.
By establishing and adhering to brand guidelines, maintaining a high-value brand image becomes much simpler.
Because our studio believes they are a critical component of branding, all of our brand identity projects come with a brand style guide so that our clients understand and are comfortable implementing their brand identity assets autonomously after offboarding.
If you’re interested in learning more about what a brand identity project could look like for your business, start a conversation with Studio Kellams by submitting an inquiry form today!
