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Tag: Brand Guidelines

5 Common Mistakes in Brand Design Today

Posted on by Paulina McFarland

The Brand Design Journey

If you’re looking for a brand design or redesign, you’ll need more than a logo or a new website. Brand design is bigger than that. Designing a brand entails designing every moment and experience people have with your brand. It’s about every touchpoint, and these days nothing goes unnoticed. Brand design reflects how your brand looks and how it feels.

This means colors, graphic language, typeface, photography, and your logo. In the end, brand design is what brings the brand to life. It’s what makes your brand recognizable and powerful to the people that matter to your business. Because developing your brand design is no easy task, it’s easy for businesses and the people behind them to fall into common design traps. So before your brand engages in design work, consider these five common mistakes, why they are problematic, and how to avoid them.

1. Designing for tomorrow and not today

In a world where digital innovation and advancement is critical to a brand’s survival, brands need to be designed for new technology. Fluidity and flexibility is key here. The digital landscape requires adaptability. And in order to maintain brand relevance, brands need to anticipate how they will compete in the future market. Stagnant brands simply don’t create powerful brand experiences. Every touchpoint and interaction counts. Designers who want to design a powerful brand with a strong emotional impact, one that will stay relevant over time, and drive business in a sustainable way need to design with the future of the brand in mind. This means taking an adaptable, dynamic, digital, experiential, and always forward thinking approach that aligns with the brand’s vision and aspirations.

2. Playing lookalike

Differentiation in branding is of great importance. Yet many brands take the safe route. And as a result, brands end up looking similar to competitors or adapting to the short-lived design trends of the month. Even though design is supposed to help brands stand out, the design landscape continues to be filled with brands that quite honestly, look and feel the same. And sameness doesn’t move a business forward. Designing a brand requires taking risks. It takes courage. You have to be bold. And we know it’s not always easy. Challenge yourself and your clients to design brands that aren’t afraid to say something different. 

3. Forgetting about guidelines

Your agency or company could build the most prolific visual identity, pick the perfect colors, or create a logo that could change the entire game. But the fact is, a brand can’t come to life if the visual identity isn’t rolled out correctly. Businesses often overlook the importance of brand guidelines because they aren’t easy to create. No one wants to create or read a manual. However, people need a roadmap for keeping the brand consistent and powerful. Brand guidelines give businesses the tools people need to bring the brand to life, keeping it clear, consistent, and recognizable. Brands without brand guidelines often end up inconsistent, valueless, and unable to grow. If you want to make the brand rollout a success, you need guidelines.

4. Overcomplicating it

Simplicity and clarity is key for brand design. Complicated brand design ends up diluting the brand’s overall emotional impact and making the brand less recognizable to the people who matter to its success. However, it’s important that when straying away from overcomplicated you make sure you understand your audience and don’t dumb it down for them. Simple doesn’t mean banging your audiences across the head. Working as a team and eliciting feedback at multiple points of the process can help move the design towards clarity and simplicity.

5. Ignoring Strategy

Tying strategy with design is one of the most important things a brand can do. Use strategy as a guiding map for how the brand should come to life visually. Even though strategists and designers often have different toolboxes, marrying the two skillsets and ways of thinking can help build a more impactful, purposeful brand. Often times, clients want design that has nothing to do with the strategy that’s been developed. Make sure you explain the impact that strategically informed design can create, and demonstrate the power of strategically informed design. By bringing design and strategy together, your brand becomes more valuable and impactful.

Brand Design for Maximum Impact

Design a brand that engages your target audience and generates demand. One that will be able to adapt to digital advances, increased customer experiences, and heed off competition. Use your visual identity to help your brand stand out and highlight what makes you stand out. Keep it simple. Use your strategy to lead you in, and don’t forget to create the guidelines the brand needs for a successful rollout. If you avoid these five mistakes, the brand will be more powerful to its audiences, and more able to move business forward. The brand design will support the brand as it grows and prospers in a competitive design landscape.

Read another post from our design team: Brand Identity: What’s Your Type?

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy and design agency.

Brand Guidelines: An Interview with Emotive Brand Senior Designer

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

The Importance of Brand Guidelines

Emotive Brand hinges itself on the ability to transform businesses through brand strategy and strategically informed design. Miguel, a senior designer in the studio, works to bring brands to life by creating clear, inspired, and emotive brand identities. In this interview, Miguel discusses a process of branding that is often overlooked: building brand guidelines. Read to learn more about the importance of having a roadmap for your brand and how it should be used to create maximum impact.

Why might businesses overlook the importance of brand guidelines?

They aren’t easy. No one wants to read a manual. And it can be overwhelming, both to digest and to create. Building a clear guide takes focus, a high attention to detail, and a deep understanding of the brand itself. I think part of the reason why people disregard the importance of guidelines is that they don’t fully grasp all the places their brand touches. It isn’t just a logo. It’s composed of a variety of elements that when used correctly together make your brand recognizable and meaningful to people. You need a roadmap to keep the brand consistent. Brand guidelines are essential to every brand no matter how big or small, local or global, new or old.

How do guidelines help bring a brand to life?

The goal of brand guidelines is to help your people – designers, writers, strategists, new employees, veterans, freelancers, hired agencies, etc. – bring your brand to life. Brand guidelines help those people build a cohesive, clear, and recognizable brand and they are the people enabled to propel your business. Without guidelines, the brand assets have no value – the guidelines bring them to life. They provide a clear and simple toolbox that includes a set of standards for using brand names, logos, typefaces, and other design elements in ads, brochures, newsletters, packaging, digital communications, and any other ways the brand might communicate.

What happens when a brand doesn’t have clear guidelines?

The brand will inevitably become inconsistent. It will be diluted. This means that brand recognition goes down and customers and employees become confused about your brand. With all the pieces and no instructions on how to use them, the brand assets become valueless. Without a roadmap, your brand seems unsure of where it is and where it’s going. Especially during times of growth, those new to your brand need to have a clear understanding of how they can help your brand live. So you need a strong, consistent, and solid brand to stand out. Without a guide, that just isn’t possible.

How do the guidelines help employees?

In the end, having a clear guide helps the whole team become aligned. It doesn’t matter if you’re a strategist or a designer, everyone has the tools to build the brand in the most meaningful way. Everyone has a map and this map makes people feel empowered and able to do their job. Less time is wasted. Less people are frustrated and lost. Even when a business is onboarding someone new, the guidelines get them quickly on board with how the brand lives. And when you’re brand is truly living and all the parts are working altogether, that’s your emotional impact. That’s your brand doing its job.

What are some of the challenges of creating brand guidelines?

For me, as a designer, writing is not my strong suit. But I’ve learned to make sure whatever I’m writing for the guide is detailed, yet still clear and simple, much like a manual. It really has to take people through the process, step by step. It can’t be complicated because at the end of the day, complication will dilute essential brand information. I’ve learned that the simpler the visuals are, the fewer steps you need to communicate. It’s about achieving the right balance between visual and verbal instructions so the guide is the clearest it can be for everyone who might use it.

Another challenge is finding balance between laying out rules and structure, while also allowing for brand flexibility. When I’m working, I’m also thinking, “What’s the next thing for the brand?”. You have to try and imagine possibilities for the future so that the brand can grow. One thing that helps is showing examples of how the brand lives in real life situations. At Emotive Brand, we always outline parameters for print, digital, and environmental signage. These situations might not exist for the brand yet, but we are trying to help build a brand that thinks ahead and work within those parameters while still moving forward.

Do you think brand guidelines can help businesses grow?

At the end of the day, guidelines are what make a brand recognizable. The consistency a guide creates is key to people’s ability to recognize your brand. When people recognize your brand, your brand is able to grow. Strong brand guidelines help steer your business towards growth. Guidelines, in the end, are all about creating maximum impact for your brand.

Read Miguel’s post on Brand Identity: What’s Your Type?

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco brand strategy firm.

Building a Brand Voice: An Interview with Emotive Brand’s Account Strategist

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

Building a Brand Voice: An Interview with Emotive Brand’s Account Strategist

As an Account Strategist at Emotive Brand, Paige has helped many brands come to life. In addition to her role, Paige is also our go-to expert when it comes to crafting and developing a brand’s voice. She understands and deeply believes in the value of a well-articulated, emotionally impactful brand voice, and there’s nothing more rewarding for her than seeing a brand embrace their new voice and see the positive impact it has on the business.

In this post, Paige shares her thoughts on the importance of a cohesive brand voice, what a successful voice can do for business, and offers advice and guidelines on how to approach building a brand voice.

Why does voice matter in a brand strategy?

The brand voice is how the brand expresses its personality. When used consistently, the brand voice reinforces the emotional impact that the brand is trying to create with people most important to the brand’s success. The voice helps set the company apart from its competitors and creates a sense of familiarity that people need in order to become connected to the brand.

What can a well-executed brand voice do for a business?

The brand voice should be used in all external communications – from your website to sales materials to marketing collateral. Everything the brand touches should maintain a consistent voice. When people come to know and feel connected to the way the brand communicates and sounds, they’ll respond by being more engaged with the brand.

What do you feel is most important to consider when defining a brand’s voice?

I always approach the brand voice by considering the way it makes its target audiences feel and laddering up the characteristics of the voice to pay off the brand’s promise. If the brand makes people feel confident, the voice should be authoritative and precise. But you also need some guidelines to ensure that the voice doesn’t get carried away. A voice that’s overly authoritative may sound arrogant. And if it’s really precise, it may come across as inflexible. Knowing where and when to emphasize certain tones helps the voice flex and adapt to all brand touch-points. However, this kind of flexibility only works if the overarching voice has a solid foundation from which all communications derive.

 What advice would you give to someone new who is trying to follow brand voice guidelines?

Imagine the brand as a character in a movie. How would that person say something? Would he be bold and boastful or cheerful and bubbly? Would he shout or sing? Would he be warm and welcoming? Is he laid-back or buttoned-up? By personifying the brand, you can write in a voice that pays off the brand’s emotional impact. If the voice guidelines are done well, they’ll clearly identity the tenants of the brand personality for anyone writing for the brand.

 What should be included in guidelines for a brand voice deliverable?

A list of adjectives describing the brand voice is helpful but often leaves writers interpreting the voice on their own. Ideally, brand voice guidelines should include examples of what the voice is and isn’t. These parameters ensure that no matter who uses the guidelines, they interpret the voice’s characteristics the same way. A checklist also helps writers review a brand voice with a quick way to make sure the tone and language match the brand’s image. And finally, including actual copy examples in the guidelines with a range of contexts (such as a letter from the CEO and/or a social media post) shows the brand voice comes to life in a clear way that anyone writing for the brand can carry forward.

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

Branding Isn’t Static – Call Off the Brand Police!

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

How to create a coherent brand and engage the “brand police”

Many people strive for “consistency” when managing brands. But that presents the risk of being dull, repetitive and predictable. A better goal is to achieve a “coherent” brand presence.

I recently re-watched a video of Simon Manchipp of SomeOne, London in which he advised brands to be “coherent, not consistent”. He talked about people’s desire for stimulation and the need to stay current because, “time changes – branding isn’t static”.

The same colorful mix and match elements are always creating new stories

Most interesting was his analogy of branding and LEGO. LEGO pieces embody a single set of ideas and values. We all immediately recognize LEGO for what it really is. But, LEGO pieces can be assembled in many interesting, amusing, and even thought-provoking ways.

The richness of LEGO configurations illustrate what a smart brand can do when they know the essential – you might say primal – elements of what their brand represents. By creating a culture around those core elements, smart brands leave themselves plenty of room for creative expression, meaningful engagement, and an always-now feeling.

Smart brands are coherent in their presence, but not consistent in their style or execution. They give permission to both the people who manage the brand – and to those who use the brand – to explore a richer world.

Avoid the strict brand guidelines; call off the “brand police”

As Simon Manchipp puts it, “dull, repetitive, and predictable” are all deeply undesirable brand values. Don’t be a brand that insists on absolute consistency. Don’t have strict guidelines enforced by “brand police” who make careers out of controlling every brand moment of truth and taking pleasure from slapping the wrists of those who don’t place sufficient white space around a logo (God forbid!).

Instead, go with the flow, loosen up, and roam freely.

Just be sure everyone knows the job is to coherently display your brand’s heart and soul in all the ways that will make your brand truly matter to people.

Transform how your brand reaches out to people!

Emotive Brand is a San Francisco branding agency.

When the “Brand Department” Inhibits the Brand

Posted on by Tracy Lloyd

We recently spoke with someone who works for a well-known company in the telecommunications industry.

Our friend was bemoaning the internal battle going on between the “brand” team and the “product marketing” team.

It seems the brand team was trying to take more and more tasks from the product marketing team so as to “align them to the brand”.

Sounds to us like the brand team should be spending more time making sure everyone in the company – including the product marketing team – is aligned to the brand.

Continue reading “When the “Brand Department” Inhibits the Brand”