Even without a name or logo, you can probably still easily recognize several businesses. Look it over for yourself.

Over many years, Coca-Cola invested millions of dollars to establish itself as a household name. However, it all began with a well-chosen color scheme, typeface, illustration style, design, placement, and a catchy tagline. Recall “The Coke side of life”?

Each component has been combined into a cohesive system to produce a successful brand that its unique characteristics can identify. We refer to this framework as a brand guideline.

What is a brand guideline?

A brand guideline is just an internal marketing document a corporation uses. The brand guideline’s content is the most crucial component. This is in addition to the brand’s objective, visual identity, audience, and competitive research.

The brand guideline for a project is typically not made public, but it is a crucial internal tool used by the organization as an image guide.

Which kinds of brand guidelines exist?

There isn’t a clear systematization in place because the structure and format of the brand guidelines often vary depending on the activities and material that need to be completed. Consequently, what constitutes and appears like a company’s brand guideline is left open-ended.

While some individuals produce brand guidelines in paper form, others generate them electronically (in PDFs), and still more create them digitally (in the form of lendings).

Large organizations may establish many brand rules for their partners, investors, and workers. Smaller businesses might not even have brand rules; for them, guidelines will do.

Why are a guideline and a brand guideline, not the same thing?

A brand guideline and guidelines are both packed with text and include some images. What, then makes the difference?

In a previous piece, we used the metaphor of the matryoshka doll to explain the distinctions between guidelines and brand guidelines. The concept is that a guidelines document is like a big matryoshka doll with a brand guideline inside of it. Thus, the rules are included in the brand guidelines.

While the brand guidelines’ components include potential research, leading tactics, and ideological aspects of the brand, the guidelines outline the visual identity.

What a brand guideline is intended for?

You don’t need a brand guideline if your company isn’t Coca-Cola, Sber, or Prada. However, it’s best to consider your brand concept from the start and combine all the components of the brand guideline if you intend to expand and grow.

You shouldn’t be concerned that after creating a brand guideline, you’ll put it on a shelf and let it collect dust. This is among the company’s most frequently utilized papers. It is regularly reviewed by full-time designers, referred to by PR and marketing professionals, and examined by HR.

Furthermore, it is imperative for other entities who produce goods for the business, such as advertising agencies, printing businesses, and freelancers, to have this information as well.

The reason the brand guideline is so crucial is that it addresses the most essential tasks:

1.Clearly explains the regulations and provides staff with training

An organization’s comprehensive set of values, principles, and tactics is called a brand guideline.

Employees may perform more efficiently, and contractors can accurately complete orders by understanding these criteria.

2.Compiles every component of the business brand.

A brand guideline describes every style element, including fonts and colors, and provides examples of the identity across many media.

The brand guideline’s requirements are followed in designing all signs, corporate uniforms, and events when a new branch is opened, a product is launched, or a project is started.

3.Makes the task more efficient

The brand guideline already provides rules and examples for any product design.

It suffices to use pre-made layouts and construct new ones by analogy rather than investing time and money in designing designs and educating the printing company on how to accomplish it.

What makes up a brand guideline?

Based on present objectives, the firm decides what makes up the brand guideline and how much of it. A collection of multiple multi-page presentations and a tiny PDF document both accomplish the same goal.

What is covered by the brand guideline? A company’s document may incorporate significant research or contain the company’s objective and key operating principles. It may gather every component of the identification. Alternatively, mockups are unnecessary.

What should the brand guidelines always include? There are no absolutes when it comes to regulations. The brand guideline has several components that are most frequently used:

· Brand characteristics: positioning, values, and mission

· Visual system: standards for style use and brand identity

How do you create guidelines for a brand?

This is not something you can finish in a few days. You will need a team of experts to order a brand guideline that will remain relevant for over ten years.

The creation of brand guidelines occurs in many stages:

· Developing a central brand

This covers creating a purpose and values statement, selecting an archetype, and positioning as part of the development of brand characteristics. We continue to research the audience at this point by describing the target audience groups and the brand champion.

· Idenity formation

We begin by deciding on a metaphor, establishing guidelines for using the visuals and logo, organizing the font and color scheme, and outlining the photography style.

· After this phase, we visualize the media by making mocap, compiling layout standards, and organizing every layout into a single repository.

Examples of well-known firms’ brand guidelines

Let’s look at some noteworthy worldwide brand standards.

Microsoft took care of the manual’s meticulous and comprehensive content:

Aeroflot provides detailed specifications for media versions for the following parameters: pitch, interlineage, tracking, kerning, and slant.

Several companies, such as Coca-Cola, Chanel, Disney+, and Leviʼs, provide usage guidelines for individual logo parts.

The eight categories of travelers that New York State welcomes, as described in its “I LOVE NEW YORK” brand guideline, represent the target audience.

The brand narrative of Johnnie Walker whiskey is as follows:

When creating a brand guideline for the Eastern European Institute of Psychoanalysis, our firm goes into great detail to explain the core idea of psychoanalysis:

As outlined in the brand guideline, well-crafted guidelines can prevent various issues, such as inconsistent media design, disorganized employee labor, and needless time loss. As a result, contractors and the business as a whole both benefit.