Your brand serves as the public face of your company, therefore developing and enhancing it is essential to establishing a significant market presence. To maintain your brand’s identity and develop trust with your target audience, it is equally crucial to apply it consistently across all channels. Brand guidelines are a document that you, your team, and your vendors may use to ensure that everyone uses your brand elements correctly.
What are Brand Guidelines
Brand guidelines are a set of instructions that help a company maintain a consistent and recognizable brand identity across all communication channels. Consistency builds trust with consumers and differentiates the brand from competitors.
The guidelines include instructions on using the logo, color palette, typography, imagery, messaging, and tone of voice. They also help employees understand how to represent the brand and provide a framework for decision-making in marketing, advertising, and product development.
What’s Included in Brand Guidelines
Brand Guidelines are based on your brand’s identity, and how you differentiate your brand from others. This means that the components in your brand guidelines may not have the same appearance as those in the guidelines of another brand. We suggest using the following elements in your brand guidelines:
- Logos
- Colors
- Fonts
- Mission
- Purpose
- Vision
- Target Audience
- Core Values
Why You Should Use Brand Guidelines
Brand guidelines provide internal and external stakeholders with information about a brand, helping them understand how to represent the brand consistently in marketing efforts. Consistency is important for creating a reliable and recognizable brand identity, building trust with consumers, and standing out from competitors.
Brand awareness campaigns can also increase familiarity with a product or service, and social media is a useful tool for this. Researching competitors, understanding the target market, articulating the brand message, and developing strong customer relationships can inform the development of brand guidelines.
Starting Your Brand Guidelines
The first step to creating brand guidelines is working with a brand strategist to define your brand’s essence and identity. Studio Lyn helps you craft your written and visual brand components and then puts them together to create your personalized brand guidelines.
