Avoid (and solve!) these common brand guide weaknesses

Properly built, a brand guide can become an invaluable tool, helping businesses put their best foot forward, maintain necessary consistency, and unite stakeholders in their mission to build the business’ image. Improperly built, they can become a frustration to employees, be time-consuming to follow, and restrict both creativity and healthy brand evolution.

Over the past decade, I’ve become quite familiar with where many guides have fallen short. In fact, I’ve built, re-built, and implemented the guidance of many branding guides and have learned a lot throughout the process. This has included everything from designing logos, collateral, and websites to writing impactful content, building go-to-market strategies, and working with legal teams on protectable product naming.

Whether you’re building a new brand yourself, revising some older guidelines or evaluating different brand agencies, here’s a quick overview of some commonly overlooked thinking when establish a brand:

1- A rigid template with little customization

We’ve all seen them: The pretty moodboard-esque one pagers that sum up a brand’s key assets. They’ll typically feature one or two logo variations, some colour-coded circles, a few standard fonts and a handful of core images. They pad the portfolios of those new to the industry and yield eye rolls from most others. The thinking behind these is often reinforced by tools such as Canva which have built-in brand guides with these exact section headings. Don’t get me wrong – There’s nothing wrong with something light-weight and easily accessible, but often these are misunderstood as everything that’s needed.

Every company is different and their brand needs differ equally. The larger the business, often the more complex their brand architecture is and your brand guide is exactly where it should be codified. A few common examples:

• Will your logo be showcased with partners or affiliates? If so, how these are to be displayed alongside each other is often more important (and far less intuitive) than the external spacing guidance or logo mockups found in most templates.
• Will materials be mostly digital or printed? Depending on your answer here, you’ll need to consider different colour palettes for the appropriate media (RGB or HEX for digital, and CMYK or pantone for print) as well as suitable logo variations. Common digital requirements include small format icons (such as the ones found on your browser tab) and light-weight, scalable SVG copies for the web. Meanwhile, print-heavy businesses often benefit from a grayscale version which can be printed in Black and White. Those planning to invest in lots of promotional products may want to consider additional variations such as embroidery files.

2- Only including visual elements

A brand is so much more than your logo and fonts. Think of everything your customer sees and interacts with – That’s your brand. The clearer this vision is conveyed amongst your team, the more cohesive this experience will feel externally.

It’s helpful to start with your “raison d’etre”. What mission did you set out to accomplish when you started your business? What values did you feel were important to weave within your daily activities? Keep these at the front of your guide so they aren’t forgotten. It may seem silly, but keeping your mission and values within your line of sight will help you build out assets that reflect them.

Content is equally important as any brand visuals, yet they are frequently forgotten when assembling a guide. Slogans, key phrases, tonality and specific points of competitive difference are all worthy of inclusion and can help minimize the time spent drafting collateral.

3- Overly restrictive design guidance

This often highlights whether or not the business’ use cases were truly considered when building the guide. Good design requires flexibility… To adapt to a specific medium, audience, user case, etc.

• Fonts: If any custom fonts are used, ensure there is a web-safe variant and a backup or commonly used alternative for restrictive settings.
• Logo variations: Ensure you have appropriate versions for very small dimensions (ex. Browser icons) or simplified colours for embroider or B&W printing.
• Colours: Too often, the codes for the colours found within the logo are added with nothing more. This yields too restrictive a colour palette for designing subsequent materials. It’s important to include neutrals for body text and headings, as well as appropriate call-outs.

4- Omitting protectable assets

When defending any trademarks, it’s important to demonstrate continued and consistent use of them. While including any existing marks and their required usage is essential, it doesn’t hurt to be aspirational here. Including trademarks you’d like to pursue in the future can help you align current materials and begin to build recognition in advance.

5- Lacking healthy revisions

Many will tell you, “consistently is key” when it comes to building strong brand recognition. While that’s not incorrect, recognition isn’t worth much if it doesn’t carry a positive or correct association. That’s exactly the risk many run when they treat their guides as a static document set in stone. Meaningful evolution is healthy and there are a handful of reasons your brand may benefit from an update:

Your initial assumptions were incorrect: If you’ve only recently launched a brand, it’s important to keep an eye on associated key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure it’s achieving its desired effect.

The market has changed: What worked once won’t always work forever. The rate of disruption only continues to increase and

Your company has changed: If new products, services or an organizational update has altered your value proposition, it may be time to signify that change within your brand.

6- Forgetting the initial design thinking

Corporate knowledge is precious, but is easily lost over time. Often, certain design decisions were made based on the business’ specific limitations, legacy relationships, or established trial and error. Unless you boast a 100% employee retention rate and all have flawless memories, I’d recommend adding this in.

What thinking led to the current logo and what does it embody? What other options were considered and why weren’t they the right choice? What previous iterations exist? Including insight such as this may sound frivolous, but can safe-guard against two common issues:

Introducing changes that conflict with needs: This one is often experienced alongside new leadership looking to infuse new ideas (often great), but don’t have the necessary intel to advise them.

Not recognizing when to pivot: Building off weakness #5, if certain elements were determined based on a company position or market condition that have changed, it may be time to consider a refresh.

7- It needs to be a beautiful document

If you’re either panicking or rolling your eyes thinking there’s no way you’ll have time to assemble all of this, remember: Brand guides are about codifying your strategy. Don’t fall for the trap that this insight needs to be housed within a beautiful slide deck. While I’ll always applaud polish (especially in areas that bring pride) designing the type of decks you see agencies touting can take a lot of time for something that’s only used internally and will likely evolve. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a Google Doc or equivalent. If this is easily accessible to all employees writing or designing materials that represent your company, they have the right intel to pull the codes and assets into whatever realm is most helpful to them.

Are you ready to get started?

There’s no set, all-inclusive list of things to include within a brand guide, but if you or your designers have considered the elements above, you’re likely in a good position. Remember to treat your brand guide as a working repository for new information as your business grows and develops new use cases.

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