Brand Manual Guidelines that Amplify Business Communications

Last Updated on November 25, 2022 by DesignerPeople

Sure, you have acquired the lead for your business, but what if the customer didn’t sign up in the first instance? How do you plan on making the same customer return to your brand?

If there was one thing consistent across branding over the past few decades, it has to be your brand manual.

The right branding gives your business identity and separates you from the competitive environment, resulting in more confirmed sales for your business.

Customers prefer consistency with creativeness in brands. Your brand manual will keep your brand consistent and recognisable to your target audiences.

Similarly, when you approach a third-party agency to run an ad campaign for your brand, your brand manual will act as the guidance to present your brand accurately in the campaign.

As we said, your brand manual typically represents the most authentic essence of your brand; that’s why you can’t go wrong while creating your first brand manual!

You need to consider particular elements when crafting your first brand manual. Here is a comprehensive Brand Design Guidelines that will walk you through the complete process of creating your brand manual and successfully executing it for your brand. Let’s get started.

What is a brand manual or brand style guide?

A brand manual or style guide is a document that contains your brand information such as the brand’s purpose, vision, mission, positioning, proposition, values, background, story, culture, architecture, customer personas and more.

Your brand manual defines how your brand can be used and deployed on various relevant communication channels or touch points.

With a consistent brand theme across all the parts in the brand manual, you can drive more brand recognition and preference among your customers using the brand manual.

It is precisely how you want your brand to be presented to the world through your logo, font, colour palette, and more.

Fundamental Elements of a brand manual guide

A brand manual or style guide consists of different components that create the right kind of brand recognition within your target audiences. We will explore each of the sections below for your reference.

• Table of contents and the cover page

For every brand manual or style guide, you need to set up a consistent and straightforward context, tone of voice and narrative, which will be covered in your cover page, and table of contents.

Start with a distinct and beautiful layout of your primary logo design on the inner page and build a contrast of colours using another colour that would make your logo pop on that background.

Next, create a complete table of contents with page numbers about the elements you will include in your brand manual or style guide. Break down everything into minor sections possible and number accordingly for a simplified understanding of the reader.

• Background and Introduction

Every brand has a unique story which needs to be represented by a brand manual. Talk about a fresh, exciting brand story that connects well with your stakeholders and other team members.

77% of consumers globally prefer shopping from brands that share the same values as they do. Hence, sharing your brand background and introduction in your brand manual is absolutely necessary!

Introduce with a simple summary and discuss the heart and soul of your company. The five points you need to include in your brand story are:

● Vision
● Mission
● Audience
● Personality
● Values

Ensure that you add the most valuable elements in your brand introduction, which can be helpful as a reference point for others.

• Primary Specifications for Logo Design

The following essential aspect of your brand manual is your logo design. Ensure that your logo has the right icons, typography and other elements suitable for your brand. Try using the logo in different backgrounds of the brand manual to analyse it well.

Avoid stretching, condensing, re-aligning, or altering your logo, as this may send the wrong brand message. Stay consistent with your logo’s optimum size, space, colours and other elements.

• Color Wheel & Tints

Consistency with a specific colour palette in the brand manual is one of the most crucial aspects of any successful brand or startup. If you analyse other brands out there, you will notice all of them follow a specific colour palette across every channel, especially their brand manual.

A signature brand colour can increase your brand recognition efforts to more than 80%.

Thus, picking the right colour palette and being consistent with it across every branding strategy is the key to successful brand recall.

• Type and typography Hierarchy

The value of typography and its hierarchy is the next important element in your brand manual that effectively communicates your message to the audience.

Choose the best lettering style for the design process and simple and easy-to-decipher fonts.

Being consistent with your brand fonts and other elements has proven to increase brand revenue by at least 33%.

Have a specific type hierarchy, as it will help you show how the font and text look at different sizes and headings of various weights.

• Corporate Iconography

Iconography is all about the identification, description and interpretation of the content of the images and the subjects in an artistic style.

To make your brand manual presentable and practical, you must create icons always consistent with the primary brand identity and add value to your manual’s overall visual system that helps convey the brand information well to the target audiences.

Ensure that the coins you create look good across every branding strategy. Resist the temptation of simply buying off the clip art icons to represent your brand. Instead, choose to customise it based on your brand identity.

• Grid Systems

A grid is a structure(usually two-dimensional) built with a series of intersecting straight or curved guide lines to structure the content and the images in your brand manual.

Your branding grid system is an essential element in laying out a consistent architecture for your brand manual. Even being invisible, the grid systems of your manual play a significant role in making your brand manual look aesthetically pleasing and enhancing the brand language.

• Images styling

The images and illustrations used for your brand manual are the next paramount elements that steer the audience in the right direction.

Ensure that the images aren’t too overwhelming by including multiple colours and shapes. Keep it simple and accurate to your brand voice and colour palette. Find the right images representing the particular segment or mood in your brand manual, as this can help interact with the audience well through the brand manual.

• Brand voice

Since we are focusing on the brand identity here, you need to ensure that your brand voice is unique, loud, clear and consistent again.

Your brand voice strongly affects how your target audiences feel about you.

Make your brand personality do all the talking. Pick words that align with your brand well and are easy to recall. Include the right adjectives that genuinely describe your brand to its core, and try to connect well with your audience for maximum efficacy.

Conclusion

Your brand is so much more than just the products and services you sell. A strong and successful brand tells the world why they should choose your business over the other options in the market. This is precisely where a brand manual or style guide can work at your rescue.

Some brand manuals can go as thick as a novel, while some may stick to only one-page references. All of it depends on how well you can represent your brand in the manual in the most authentic and lucid way.

Ensure that you include all the brand elements discussed above and share all the references and other components that will direct the reader to the next step. With the right steps and strategies, you can quickly build an impactful and well-crafted brand manual that streamlines your future brand communications and marketing strategies.

Author: Anush Malik

Being a strategist’s head and a long term visionary personality aims to achieve excellence in branding, packaging and digital marketing field. My 15 years of design experience and masters degree ais my strength which keeps me motivated and keep me going positively. I have participated in extensive branding design conquests in India, USA, Australia and New Zealand with winning zeal. My objective is to encourage start-ups and hence involves actively in the articles which will act as a productive intake of knowledge for them. Do connect me personally via my LinkedIn and I love to share my expertise with you.