Why Are Brand Guidelines Important?

What is a brand?

Your brand is instantly recognisable by consumers. We all probably know the tech giant whose logo looks like a piece of bitten fruit. Or the luxury car manufacturer that has four interconnected rings.

Colour plays an important role. A recent survey found that 80% of people recognise Starbucks by their brand’s colour, while 91% chose Google by its distinctive blue, green, yellow, and red colours.

However, it takes creativity and consistency to build a brand that is as strong and consistent as possible.

Your brand represents who you are and what you do. It also reflects how you present yourself to the market. To ensure your brand doesn’t become diluted, polluted or lost as your business grows, it is important to protect it. You can protect your brand whether your business is large or small, by creating a solid set of brand guidelines.

WebVirtuoso is a company that works with brands to ensure their websites adhere to predefined branding guidelines.

This article will cover all aspects of brand guidelines from their definition and purpose to real-life examples.

What are Brand Guidelines?

Your brand guidelines are what you should be using internally and externally.

Brand guidelines are more than a guide, as the name suggests. They provide instructions and strict standards for how you should use your visual assets like logos and words to represent you accurately and convey your brand identity.

You can use brand guidelines for logo design, hardcopy brochures, digital PDFs for quick reference, video presentations, or pages on your website design. You can choose the medium that best suits your business and strategy, as well as who will be using your guidelines.

Brand guidelines can be used to outline brand elements, or as a brand style guide. They help you tell your brand story, including target market, voice and logos.

Why are brand guidelines important?

THEY MAINTAIN BRAND CONSISTENCY

To maintain consistency in your brand’s representation, a brand style guide is essential. It can be difficult to control the way your brand is used depending on how big your business is. If people know you, they will search for your brand, i.e. “WebVirtuoso“. That way, they are much more likely to find you. If you are not known, then you will be grouped with everyone else providing your service. i.e. “Web Design Alfreton“, making it less likely that they can find you.

A brand guideline is a set of clear guidelines and standards that ensures the reproduction of your logo, company name, packaging, and other items. All of these elements are unified in a consistent, solid identity that is consistent with your brand story.

THEY BUILD A RECOGNISABLE BRAND

Consistency is key to making your brand more easily identifiable by consumers.

Imagine that you own a beauty company and sell your products to many salons in the UK. To ensure that your brand is consistent across all promotional materials, these salons must follow your brand guidelines.