Brand Guidelines

With the proliferation of channels and touchpoints for brands to engage with customers, ensuring that your brand is consistent across each one in messaging, appearance, tone of voice, and experience should be a high priority. Building brand loyalty hinges on the latest interaction, and if it’s a poor one, your customer may no longer be your customer.

When we say touchpoints, we’re referring to online AND offline. Just as important as your website and social accounts are traditional print pieces, whether direct mail, packaging, in-store graphics, or magazine advertising.

The best way to achieve consistency is through a thorough set of brand guidelines that define every design facet of your organization’s brand. Most of the time, your customers’ first impression in any medium is going to be the way your company appears. Are the colors consistent? What about the logo treatment? Is the style of photography on-brand? Illustration? Is the right typography being used, and is it being used consistently in its structure (e.g., all uppercase, title case, left justified)?

A uniform visual experience is vital, but so are many intangible elements of a brand. An organization’s tone of voice is just as important as the imagery it uses. Should your company’s voice use everyday language? Should it lean more into business-speak? Some brands feel right using a lot of emotion in their communication. Others rely heavily on humor. Whatever the case, a thoughtful brand guidelines & standards document should guide the marketing team, no matter the type of content being written or produced.