The Importance of Brand
Guidelines
By Kristen Rebelo
January 5, 2019
I’m going to let you in on an industry secret today. It’s called brand guidelines. Okay so maybe you’ve heard of these, or if you’re a designer you’ve likely worked with them at some point. But why are brand guidelines so important, and why are they necessary for your organization to scale its creative vision and marketing plan?
Having brand guidelines is an essential part of executing creative work, and is the only way to ensure that your brand is used correctly and consistently by multiple people across platforms as your mission grows. Think of brand guidelines as the drummer in a band. She’s not at the front, but when she doesn’t show up to set the beat, everyone’s just playing to their own rhythm.
SO TO START, WHAT ARE BRAND GUIDELINES?
Brand guidelines compile your brand elements into a comprehensive and shareable document.
A good set of brand guidelines will clearly outline major visual elements (from your logo, to color palette, to typefaces), and define how to use these parts to make your brand come together as a whole and to maintain its integrity.
So we’re all on the same page — brand guidelines are sometimes referred to as “identity guidelines”, “brand manuals”, “style guides”, etc. Just different names for the same thing.
I’ll be honest, brand guidelines aren’t the flashiest thing when it comes to creative work. But they are essential behind-the-scenes documents that every successful organization is using, I promise. Here’s a couple of examples that range in complexity:
Yes, these are some big names. But brand guidelines are not just for major global companies, and the earlier you get yours locked down, the better.
You may not see brand guidelines in our portfolio at House of Rebelo (mostly for confidentiality reasons), but I can’t count how many of these guides I’ve produced over the years for my clients at all stages of their growth. The worst case scenario for a creative partner, which has happened to me, is working with an established organization who has no guidelines to reference. This leaves the person you’re working with to basically guess how to execute your brand as they see fit; creating either an inconsistent brand application or a lot of back and forth and miscommunications. Which leads me to...
WHY ARE BRAND GUIDELINES SO IMPORTANT?
First — consistency. Consistency is the core tenant of any successful brand. When you’re producing content (from digital marketing, to publications, to product launches), you want your audience to instantly recognize that you are the force behind what’s been created. It’s how you build an audience that understands the core of who you are and what you do. When your audience knows you, they can meaningfully engage with you and take action — whether that’s purchasing your service or voting for you as a political candidate (yes, candidates need brand guidelines too). Think of how every single thing Apple produces looks the same. This is brand consistency at work, and clearly established brand guidelines are a key tenant in the success of their marketing. In fact, Apple has multiple sets of brand guidelines for each sector of their business.
Second reason for brand guidelines — scalability. Oh boy, this is a big one and in my experience causes the most problems. Think about it. You’ve worked with designers to do the upfront branding work that gets you started (the major pieces — a logo, a website, and an ad package). But now, you want to get some event signage made and work directly with your local printer. How are they to know the Pantone values of your color palette? Next, you’ve hired someone to take over your social media. Awesome. Now, what fonts are they supposed to use to create original branded content? Are they to guess?
Do you want to have to go back to your designer (and pay them) every time you have a question about brand application or want to have a piece of collateral made? Or do you want to pay upfront for them to define what your brand is, to get it out of their heads and into a document that you can share with your whole team? (Answer: it’s the latter).
Do you want to pay thousands of dollars to reprint your publication because the person who made it took a guess at your company’s shade of blue and got it very wrong? Pro tip — using correct and consistent color values is really important because everything prints differently than it looks on a screen. How do you ensure your designers and printers get it right the first time? That’s right, brand guidelines.
The more people you have within your organization, the more vendors you’re working with, the more important it is to have brand guidelines established at the beginning. This way, your brand doesn’t stray from its original intention and become a confusion of mixed messaging. When this happens, you lose your audience.
2. HOW TO SELL USING PERSUASIVE CREATIVE WORK
Here’s the thing about the corporate world: the ultimate goal is to sell. A product, a service, often something that falls outside the realm of people’s basic needs. And large global companies are very good at tailoring their processes and creative strategies to achieve millions of dollars in profits. From ad targeting, to trend forecasting, to using the psychology of persuasive design to capture and influence audiences, let’s just say that marketing tactics can be very effective (and can get a little creepy).
Creative work in the corporate world is extremely deliberate and strategic, which is why it works so well. And while the nonprofit world is really good at making change, in my experience, they’re not often great at selling change — at getting audiences on board with their organization, or in being as innovative with their marketing efforts as the private sector.
Because here’s the thing; those same creative strategies that generate millions in the sale of sneakers are also extremely effective when it comes to selling people, ideas, and causes that bring genuine good into our world. And you can implement this high-level design thinking into your own processes, no matter the scale of your organization.
3. HOW TO ITERATE, BE INNOVATIVE, AND REMAIN AGILE IN YOUR CREATIVE PROCESSES. #STARTUPLIFE
One of my first design jobs was at a startup. Was it hard work with constantly moving parts, making it necessary to wear dozens of hats? Yes. Because of this, was it truly some of the best work experience I could have asked for? Also yes. In the startup world, I learned to iterate. To just get shit done and out into the world, to think on my feet, and to make quick decisions. To observe the needs of my clients, the landscape of their market, and to respond to both in my creative work.
I think back to this startup experience a lot when I talk to people at nonprofits that are 15 years behind on their creative and marketing tactics. Who don’t understand why maintaining their website and thinking outside the box is going to increase their donations, and inevitably their ability to make change in the world. Or when I talk to small business owners afraid of the investment required to produce the effective creative work that’s going to level up their business. I get it, when you’re in a nonprofit or starting a business, you’re busy making a lot happen. But when it comes to successful marketing, the corporate world is beating you.
The need for agile processes is especially crucial when it comes to politics. It drives me nuts that the asks of creative work in this field are still limited to “business as usual”, when post-2016, nothing in politics is business as usual. There’s a great scene in the documentary Knock Down the House, when Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez points out the differences between her creative campaign materials and her opponent’s. Hers were concise, bold, bilingual, and actionable. His were too long, all about him, and didn’t even tell people when to vote. Guess who won? She did.
4. THE IMPORTANCE OF ASSET MANAGEMENT AND PRODUCTION WORK
Do you know who has no choice but to have their ducks in a row when it comes to creative asset management? A global company. The corporate design world is excellent at asset management because they have to be in order to keep projects on track and communicate across large, remote creative teams. This important behind-the-scenes organizational work is one of the key insights I learned early on.
What’s asset management? It’s bringing together all of the brand elements and files that make your creative work come to life, and organizing them to pass among teams. I won’t get too into the weeds here, but the gist is that without systems and processes established around asset management, your creative work is going to be a mess and a million things will get lost in communication. You’re going to end up with files named “SiteDesign_R10_FINALv3_SERIOUSLYTHISTIME.png” (sound familiar, freelancers?) This is a massive headache for everyone involved in a project, especially your client.
A lot of people I talk to about design don’t realize this, but there’s a difference in our industry between what’s called “creative work” and “production work”. Basically, creative work is “the fun stuff” — things like brand design or large ad campaigns. Production work is “the necessary stuff” — like creating thousands of consistent retail product signs (yes, I’ve done this.) Production work gets a bad rap, but it’s the foundational work that designers need to master before they can efficiently produce creative work. This is my biggest piece of advice for young designers. You’ve gotta know the rules before you can break them, and there’s no where you’ll earn these stripes like in the world of corporate design.
5. ALL THE ISMS ARE REAL, AND THE LACK OF TRUE DIVERSITY ON YOUR CREATIVE TEAMS IS GOING TO BE YOUR DOWNFALL
I give the corporate world real kudos for all of the above lessons I’ve learned. Thanks y'all, I’m eternally grateful. But now I get to point out where the corporate world is failing, and where we can learn from them what not to do.
Because some problematic shit can happen when you’re the only woman in a conference room. Or when a creative campaign is made exclusively by white people (myself included, I’m far from perfect).
And I don’t mean you should check a box by hiring one woman, or one person of color, who’s meant to speak for all marginalized people (and is then immediately silenced by the larger group). I mean thinking strategically about your hiring processes to gather a genuine cross-section of talent, identity, and experiences of the world. Doing this is to your benefit.
Here’s what happens when you’re not implementing true diversity (race, gender, sexual orientation, age, ability, all the things) into your creative teams:
- You’re going to make embarrassing and costly mistakes/oversights that hurt both your brand reputation and your organization’s bottom line.
- The creative campaign or product you’re making is going to suffer because you’re lacking user perspectives in the testing phase. If you doubt me on this, just look at a huge problem in the tech world right now. AI facial recognition is literally having trouble classifying people of color as “human”, because the software itself was built by predominantly white people who did not account for differences in skin tone. That’s not okay. Or for something less troubling but still irritating, look at the long lines at public women’s restrooms — a system designed by men, without women in the room to offer better solutions. It didn’t have to be this way.
- You’re missing out on voices, talent, and perspectives that are going to make your creative work innovative, effective, and speak to a larger market. It’s 2020. Quit sucking and get on board before you lose your audience.
In the end, I could rally against the corporate design world or I could appreciate and learn from it what I can. I choose the latter. The experience has made me smarter, more agile, and more effective in my creative processes so that I can now apply those same strategies with my clients who are working towards a better and more equitable world. ★
Curious to know how you can apply this knowledge to support your mission? Get in touch for a creative strategy session to see if we can create some real change together.
The Importance of Brand
Guidelines
By Kristen Rebelo
January 5, 2019
I’m going to let you in on an industry secret today. It’s called brand guidelines. Okay so maybe you’ve heard of these, or if you’re a designer you’ve likely worked with them at some point. But why are brand guidelines so important, and why are they necessary for your organization to scale its creative vision and marketing plan?
Having brand guidelines is an essential part of executing creative work, and is the only way to ensure that your brand is used correctly and consistently by multiple people across platforms as your mission grows. Think of brand guidelines as the drummer in a band. She’s not at the front, but when she doesn’t show up to set the beat, everyone’s just playing to their own rhythm.
SO TO START, WHAT ARE BRAND GUIDELINES?
Brand guidelines compile your brand elements into a comprehensive and shareable document.
A good set of brand guidelines will clearly outline major visual elements (from your logo, to color palette, to typefaces), and define how to use these parts to make your brand come together as a whole and to maintain its integrity.
So we’re all on the same page — brand guidelines are sometimes referred to as “identity guidelines”, “brand manuals”, “style guides”, etc. Just different names for the same thing.
I’ll be honest, brand guidelines aren’t the flashiest thing when it comes to creative work. But they are essential behind-the-scenes documents that every successful organization is using, I promise. Here’s a couple of examples that range in complexity:
Yes, these are some big names. But brand guidelines are not just for major global companies, and the earlier you get yours locked down, the better.
You may not see brand guidelines in our portfolio at House of Rebelo (mostly for confidentiality reasons), but I can’t count how many of these guides I’ve produced over the years for my clients at all stages of their growth. The worst case scenario for a creative partner, which has happened to me, is working with an established organization who has no guidelines to reference. This leaves the person you’re working with to basically guess how to execute your brand as they see fit; creating either an inconsistent brand application or a lot of back and forth and miscommunications. Which leads me to...
WHY ARE BRAND GUIDELINES SO IMPORTANT?
First — consistency. Consistency is the core tenant of any successful brand. When you’re producing content (from digital marketing, to publications, to product launches), you want your audience to instantly recognize that you are the force behind what’s been created. It’s how you build an audience that understands the core of who you are and what you do. When your audience knows you, they can meaningfully engage with you and take action — whether that’s purchasing your service or voting for you as a political candidate (yes, candidates need brand guidelines too). Think of how every single thing Apple produces looks the same. This is brand consistency at work, and clearly established brand guidelines are a key tenant in the success of their marketing. In fact, Apple has multiple sets of brand guidelines for each sector of their business.
Second reason for brand guidelines — scalability. Oh boy, this is a big one and in my experience causes the most problems. Think about it. You’ve worked with designers to do the upfront branding work that gets you started (the major pieces — a logo, a website, and an ad package). But now, you want to get some event signage made and work directly with your local printer. How are they to know the Pantone values of your color palette? Next, you’ve hired someone to take over your social media. Awesome. Now, what fonts are they supposed to use to create original branded content? Are they to guess?
Do you want to have to go back to your designer (and pay them) every time you have a question about brand application or want to have a piece of collateral made? Or do you want to pay upfront for them to define what your brand is, to get it out of their heads and into a document that you can share with your whole team? (Answer: it’s the latter).
Do you want to pay thousands of dollars to reprint your publication because the person who made it took a guess at your company’s shade of blue and got it very wrong? Pro tip — using correct and consistent color values is really important because everything prints differently than it looks on a screen. How do you ensure your designers and printers get it right the first time? That’s right, brand guidelines.
The more people you have within your organization, the more vendors you’re working with, the more important it is to have brand guidelines established at the beginning. This way, your brand doesn’t stray from its original intention and become a confusion of mixed messaging. When this happens, you lose your audience.
2. HOW TO SELL USING PERSUASIVE CREATIVE WORK
Here’s the thing about the corporate world: the ultimate goal is to sell. A product, a service, often something that falls outside the realm of people’s basic needs. And large global companies are very good at tailoring their processes and creative strategies to achieve millions of dollars in profits. From ad targeting, to trend forecasting, to using the psychology of persuasive design to capture and influence audiences, let’s just say that marketing tactics can be very effective (and can get a little creepy).
Creative work in the corporate world is extremely deliberate and strategic, which is why it works so well. And while the nonprofit world is really good at making change, in my experience, they’re not often great at selling change — at getting audiences on board with their organization, or in being as innovative with their marketing efforts as the private sector.
Because here’s the thing; those same creative strategies that generate millions in the sale of sneakers are also extremely effective when it comes to selling people, ideas, and causes that bring genuine good into our world. And you can implement this high-level design thinking into your own processes, no matter the scale of your organization.
3. HOW TO ITERATE, BE INNOVATIVE, AND REMAIN AGILE IN YOUR CREATIVE PROCESSES. #STARTUPLIFE
One of my first design jobs was at a startup. Was it hard work with constantly moving parts, making it necessary to wear dozens of hats? Yes. Because of this, was it truly some of the best work experience I could have asked for? Also yes. In the startup world, I learned to iterate. To just get shit done and out into the world, to think on my feet, and to make quick decisions. To observe the needs of my clients, the landscape of their market, and to respond to both in my creative work.
I think back to this startup experience a lot when I talk to people at nonprofits that are 15 years behind on their creative and marketing tactics. Who don’t understand why maintaining their website and thinking outside the box is going to increase their donations, and inevitably their ability to make change in the world. Or when I talk to small business owners afraid of the investment required to produce the effective creative work that’s going to level up their business. I get it, when you’re in a nonprofit or starting a business, you’re busy making a lot happen. But when it comes to successful marketing, the corporate world is beating you.
The need for agile processes is especially crucial when it comes to politics. It drives me nuts that the asks of creative work in this field are still limited to “business as usual”, when post-2016, nothing in politics is business as usual. There’s a great scene in the documentary Knock Down the House, when Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez points out the differences between her creative campaign materials and her opponent’s. Hers were concise, bold, bilingual, and actionable. His were too long, all about him, and didn’t even tell people when to vote. Guess who won? She did.
4. THE IMPORTANCE OF ASSET MANAGEMENT AND PRODUCTION WORK
Do you know who has no choice but to have their ducks in a row when it comes to creative asset management? A global company. The corporate design world is excellent at asset management because they have to be in order to keep projects on track and communicate across large, remote creative teams. This important behind-the-scenes organizational work is one of the key insights I learned early on.
What’s asset management? It’s bringing together all of the brand elements and files that make your creative work come to life, and organizing them to pass among teams. I won’t get too into the weeds here, but the gist is that without systems and processes established around asset management, your creative work is going to be a mess and a million things will get lost in communication. You’re going to end up with files named “SiteDesign_R10_FINALv3_SERIOUSLYTHISTIME.png” (sound familiar, freelancers?) This is a massive headache for everyone involved in a project, especially your client.
A lot of people I talk to about design don’t realize this, but there’s a difference in our industry between what’s called “creative work” and “production work”. Basically, creative work is “the fun stuff” — things like brand design or large ad campaigns. Production work is “the necessary stuff” — like creating thousands of consistent retail product signs (yes, I’ve done this.) Production work gets a bad rap, but it’s the foundational work that designers need to master before they can efficiently produce creative work. This is my biggest piece of advice for young designers. You’ve gotta know the rules before you can break them, and there’s no where you’ll earn these stripes like in the world of corporate design.
5. ALL THE ISMS ARE REAL, AND THE LACK OF TRUE DIVERSITY ON YOUR CREATIVE TEAMS IS GOING TO BE YOUR DOWNFALL
I give the corporate world real kudos for all of the above lessons I’ve learned. Thanks y'all, I’m eternally grateful. But now I get to point out where the corporate world is failing, and where we can learn from them what not to do.
Because some problematic shit can happen when you’re the only woman in a conference room. Or when a creative campaign is made exclusively by white people (myself included, I’m far from perfect).
And I don’t mean you should check a box by hiring one woman, or one person of color, who’s meant to speak for all marginalized people (and is then immediately silenced by the larger group). I mean thinking strategically about your hiring processes to gather a genuine cross-section of talent, identity, and experiences of the world. Doing this is to your benefit.
Here’s what happens when you’re not implementing true diversity (race, gender, sexual orientation, age, ability, all the things) into your creative teams:
- You’re going to make embarrassing and costly mistakes/oversights that hurt both your brand reputation and your organization’s bottom line.
- The creative campaign or product you’re making is going to suffer because you’re lacking user perspectives in the testing phase. If you doubt me on this, just look at a huge problem in the tech world right now. AI facial recognition is literally having trouble classifying people of color as “human”, because the software itself was built by predominantly white people who did not account for differences in skin tone. That’s not okay. Or for something less troubling but still irritating, look at the long lines at public women’s restrooms — a system designed by men, without women in the room to offer better solutions. It didn’t have to be this way.
- You’re missing out on voices, talent, and perspectives that are going to make your creative work innovative, effective, and speak to a larger market. It’s 2020. Quit sucking and get on board before you lose your audience.
In the end, I could rally against the corporate design world or I could appreciate and learn from it what I can. I choose the latter. The experience has made me smarter, more agile, and more effective in my creative processes so that I can now apply those same strategies with my clients who are working towards a better and more equitable world. ★
Curious to know how you can apply this knowledge to support your mission? Get in touch for a creative strategy session to see if we can create some real change together.
Kristen Rebelo
Creative Director, House of Rebelo