This week we had a short lecture on brand guidelines and then we went straight into our presentations for our brand so far. First of all the lecture on brand guidelines was a brief introduction on what they are and why we have to make them for our brand.

What are brand guidelines?

Brand guidelines are essentially an instruction manual and rule book on how to communicate your brand. They lay out all the visual details, as well as important notes about the company’s voice, tone, and messaging.

 

Daniel then went on to show us what should brand guidelines contain rules for ?

• Tone of voice
• Colour
• Logo
• Icons
• Illustration
• Motion
• Photography
• Type
• Layout

So every aspect of the brand has to be covered in the brand guidelines, for example my brands story and all the imagery for my brand too. Daniel gave us lots of examples of great brand books or guidelines and I plan on researching them to understand what the type of language I should use. He showed examples like, ‘Brand Pad’ and the ‘NASA and New York Transit manuals’ as inspiration and guidance on how to to do it.

What did I learn about brand guidelines?
I learned a lot of things, for example I learned why these are so important – it’s how the world recognises you and begins to trust you and inconsistency will confuse and alienate customers. Thats why it is important not to keep changing guidelines or your brands values. I also learned that there is so many examples out there to help me because most brands will have a brand book or guidelines manual, so I can always keep researching and learning.

What next?

I now plan on researching the most current and popular brand guidelines out there at the moment and also the most famous ones of all time for example NASA – so I can see what makes it so infamous.

I also plan on researching the format and style of brand guidelines, to see what kind of style I want to go for when presenting. I think it’s important for my brand to have a successful design for my guidelines because the ones that are so popular have the beset layout and fun graphics.