Branding Guides Part 3: How Branding Guides Are Developed

Read Part 1 Here

Read Part 2 Here

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In parts 1 and 2, we discussed what branding is and why your business needs it, however large or small you are. We also touched on how branding guides can help you form your brand identity. In this post, we’ll go into more detail about branding guides.

Visual Branding

Visual branding is key to getting your brand message across! You know how when you talk to someone, you are sometimes more influenced by their nonverbal cues than what they are actually saying? Let’s say Ashley asks her partner Michael if he would run by the grocery store and Michael says with a scowling face, “FINE. I’ll DO it. It really doesn’t matter that I already had plans.” Ashley knows it’s not fine! The visuals and tone do not match the message. 

Applying this to branding, if you want your message to come across as serious and authoritative, you probably wouldn’t use a bright, tie-dyed background with flowy fonts on your website. You might, however, use dark colors and tall fonts.

It’s not always easy to figure out these branding components, though. How exactly do you depict “laid back” with colors? How do you match your brand personality with fonts? How many fonts should you have?  What image should you choose for your logo? Should it include words or an image or both? 

These are questions a professional designer can help you with. A pro can build a branding guide for your business while helping you develop your identity. The designer makes sure it is cohesive. We offer a Brand Clarifying Questionnaire, for example, to help with this (see below).

Remember, your visual identity reflects your brand’s purpose, personality, and story, whether it is your logo, your website, or your business cards. It’s what makes your brand recognizable. Recognition, as you’ll recall, ultimately leads to more sales. And that’s something to get excited about!

Components Of Visual Branding 

Your brand identity includes all the elements that your company creates to portray its personality to its customers. Visual components reflect a brand’s purpose and help create consistent customer experiences of a brand. These may include:

• Logos
• Color palettes
• Shapes
• Patterns and textures
• Fonts/typography
• Images

Developing a branding guide means thinking through these elements, designing them, and implementing them, which takes some expert care. That’s why lots of small business owners and solopreneurs hire professional designers to do the job.

Logos

The most recognizable branding component is usually a company’s logo, so let’s go into a bit of detail about that.

A logo separates you from the competition by expressing your brand’s personality. It should prompt certain thoughts and feelings in customers. You guide these thoughts and feelings by how you represent your brand with elements of the logo—colors, font, shape, image. 

Think of the solid, boxy design of the Honda logo. It evokes a feeling of strength and toughness. Or the orange splat of the Nickelodeon logo: it feels friendly and exciting. Fanta’s thick, curvy font feels fun. Nike’s swoosh visual feels energetic. And Yahoo!’s purple, wonky Y, and slanted exclamation point feels entertaining. 

Let’s break it down even further, by dissecting the Starbucks logo. The iconic siren is modern looking, which is how the company wants customers to view their brand. They use a very recognizable green shade that is visible from a distance. Starbucks describes their illustrations as spanning “colorful and vibrant” to “playful yet restrained.” 

They emphasize the functional and the expressive; for example, with a white-on-green line drawing of a coffee maker (functional) and abstract flowers (expressive). Since they appeal to creatives and business people alike, this makes good sense. (Their image of a black and white coffeemaker with a rainbow coming out of it seems to be a mix of functional, expressive, and utter awesomeness.)

Your logo goes with you everywhere—online and offline. It needs to be relevant and fresh—but also stay consistent over time. It can be a delicate balance.

The clothing retailer GAP struggled with this balance. In an effort to remain fresh and relevant, they changed their logo in 2010. The original one had a classy feel, with white serif lettering on a bold blue square. 

The new logo used a more contemporary sans serif font with a small blue box in the upper right-hand corner. The new font appeared virtually overnight. A GAP spokesperson said they were moving from a “classic, American design” to a “modern, sexy, and cool” design.

Talk about an identity crisis! There was a ton of backlash from customers who had been happy with the 20-year-old design. People quickly posted their dislike on social media. 

GAP realized their mistake. Just as soon as the new logo appeared, it disappeared. After only a week! They have since found their balance of communicating classy by using their iconic serif font but using a more modern-looking black text on white background. 

The lesson here? Don’t be like GAP. Keep your brand recognizable and relevant. Strike the right balance with your logo from the beginning. And if it’s time to rebrand, think carefully about your strategy. Consider hiring a specialist to help you. 

Schedule a call with us to go over how we can help you create a strong visual identity. 

Examples Of Small Business Branding Guides

We have created numerous branding guides for small businesses. Let’s take a look at a few.

One guide is for Giving Backpacks. It includes logos, a color palette, typography, a mood board and a website page design. Giving Backpacks is a nonprofit effort started by two enthusiastic college boys. They gather donated backpacks and ship them to kids in Vietnam. We worked with the company to create beautiful and fun branding that would be eye-catching and appealing to their audience. 

You can see how their messaging played out in their graphics. As their organization is focused on serving kids, we chose a spin-off of the primary colors: red, blue, and yellow. A softer tone of each of these colors offers variety and pairing options. Yellow and blue as the main colors show trustworthiness and happiness. Red is the perfect accent color because it is attention-grabbing and signifies love. A swirl design used subtly throughout the website captures the energy the founders had. 

Let’s also take a look at Hidden Haven. For this bed & breakfast, it was important for the branding to be warm, inviting, and cozy.  More than anything, the owner, Pam, wants this to be a retreat for people to come and rejuvenate.

To create that inviting, cozy feeling, we used a deep red for the main color and other warm tones for the supporting colors. The owner’s favorite color is sunflower yellow, which now flows throughout her website and branding. It was the perfect color to reflect her friendly, inviting, and bright environment for would-be guests. The Windsong script font gives the illusion of a personal handwritten feel, just perfect for a bed & breakfast host.

(Owning a Bed and Breakfast has been Pam’s dream for years. Helping her give life to her dream was so inspiring for us. This is exactly why we do what we do!)

Finally, let’s glance at San Diego Strings. Katie San Diego is a passionate entrepreneur who loves the way that music can bring people together and bridge gaps. She wanted a brand that was fun and inviting as well as professional and inclusive.

We used warm tones to show the playfulness and the encouragement of creativity and thinking outside the box. A nice seafoam green and a deep cyan to balance that out shows an element of professionalism and peace. We added a splatter paint element throughout her brand to show the colors all coming together in a fun way to make something beautiful, much like an orchestra does. 

The Bottom Line On Branding and Small Business

Even though it’s time-consuming, you really can’t afford to put off the branding component of your marketing strategy. It’s a long-term plan for success!

It may seem overwhelming, but we are here to help. We offer Design Days specifically to help you create a branding strategy for your company, with an emphasis on visual identity. We will design specific visual elements for your brand, coordinate an attractive and relevant color palette, and choose impactful typefaces. You’ll receive a logo suite, mood board, patterns, textures, and more. This way, you can keep your visual messaging consistent and cohesive, bringing brand clarity. This results in recognition and trust, which leads to more customers.

Save time and stress, and let us take branding off your plate!

Schedule a call with us to talk about how we can help create a brand for your business. Our Design Days include a Brand Clarifying Questionnaire that will help you really home in on the message your business is sending.

Feel free to reach out to us anytime with questions!