When it comes to building brand awareness, consistency is key. And that’s what the biggest brands in the world have: they manage to express consistency through their logo, their visuals, their color palettes, and their tone, basically everything that represents their brand.
But how do you manage to maintain perfect homogeneity within all these different aspects? To ensure that the core brand values are clear to everyone and to ensure consistent use of brand assets, most businesses create a brand book, or brand book, a document that contains guidelines on how to use their branding .
In this article, we’ll show you all of the key elements a good brand book should contain, and how to create one.
What is a brand book?
A brand book is like a manual for your brand. It describes the identity and core values of your brand and ensures that your brand image remains consistent. It is a reference document which includes all the determining elements of your brand, starting from its strategic objectives, such as its values, its missions and its vision, to its visual identity, which is defined by a logo, a color palette, visuals, etc.
Your brand book should be a true compendium of the essence of your brand capable of reflecting its history, style, and vision.
The Brand book, thanks to the guidelines, rules, or best practices that it reveals, remains an essential element of your company’s communication strategy. It will allow you to create a strong brand personality and ensure that your message is delivered in a consistent manner.
For any business, regardless of its size and sector of activity, this harmonization is crucial, because it allows the public to immediately identify your brand and establishes a relationship of trust that is essential for your brand image.
At this point, you can legitimately ask yourself how a brand book differs from a graphic charter. The latter essentially focuses on all the graphic and visual aspects of a brand, while the brand book focuses on other types of information concerning the brand, as well as guidelines, or guidelines, which provide information on its use in different contexts and via various supports.
Why make a branded book?
As we have seen, the brand book is an essential tool for forging the brand identity of your company. Here are the main reasons:
- Define the purpose of your brand
- Ensure maximum consistency in the use of the brand on all print or digital media (website, social networks, business cards, advertising, etc.)
- Harmonize all initiatives and actions across the various departments of your company that are working on projects related to your brand, whether they are of a commercial, marketing nature, or related to your communication
- Unite your teams around the same culture and stimulate the spirit of your brand, which your employees will pass on to new recruits and partners.
How to create a brand book for your brand?
Here are the four essential steps for creating your brand book:
1- present your brand
The first step in creating a good branded book is presenting your brand. You will have to define your identity, the reason for being and the objectives of your company, to determine which values animate you.
Here’s an example of what your presentation should include:
- The story of your brand, how your adventure took shape
- Your mission, which explains why your brand exists
- Your vision, which defines how you will achieve your goals
- A promise, which explains how you will solve the problems encountered by your audience
- Your values, where you explain the meaning of your action and your commitments as a company,
- description of your products and services
A good idea to make this presentation is to do an internal audit by means of a questionnaire sent to all the members and collaborators of your company, in order to obtain relevant elements of answer on the way in which your brand is perceived.
And don’t forget to polish the editorial aspect, as this is bound to reflect the spirit of your brand. The most brilliant passages and formulations can be used in all your communication media.
2-? Detail your guidelines / guidelines
Now let’s take a look at the specific details that should be included in the rest of your brand book:
– The logo
The logo is of course the most important element of your visual identity, and it should always be represented in the same way. Inside your brand book, everything should be indicated about the characteristics of your logo, from its meaning to how it will be used, and you can for example indicate if there are variations. , a possible baseline, the dimensions to be respected, its positioning, etc.
– The typography
The brand book must provide information on all the different typefaces that can be used (main and secondary fonts, size, formatting, etc.)
– The color palette
The characteristic color palette of your brand is another fundamental element to include in your brand book, to create a homogeneous and harmonious appearance on all your media. Also indicate all the possible variations, if applicable.
In general, brands tend to choose a limited color palette, so your visual identity remains simple in appearance and easy to notice and remember.
– Visual elements
Provide specific instructions regarding the use and use of your brand images. For example, detail the dimensions and colors to be respected, indicate which photos, illustrations and icons are suitable to represent your brand, etc.
You will have to provide as much information as possible on how to reuse the graphic and pictorial universe of your brand, via concrete examples such as “DO’s and DON’Ts”
– Your brand tone
The tone and editorial style of your communication is also part of your brand’s personality and can make it easier for audiences to identify. They must be consistent with the characteristics of your target audience, especially with what in marketing is called personas.
In this part, you will have to specify the terms and the type of vocabulary that should or should not be used, in short, define the outlines of a brand language that can convey your identity and your values.
3—? Design your brand book following your own guidelines
It is interesting to design your brand book in the image of your brand, and to make it a communication medium as such for all your employees and partners. By taking the instructions for color, tone, language, formats, and layout, you can make your branded book an object of internal and external communication in its own right.
Your brand book should contain all the details that recall your brand identity and make it unique. See the design of your brand book as an opportunity to showcase the talents and creativity of your teams.
4— Distribute your brand book
This document must be easy to read and understand by all, even if the main objective of your brand book should be to clearly show the identity of your brand, do not forget to bring a little friendliness and good humor to your guidelines.
Your branded book should be distributed to all members of your teams, in a PDF format available online, for example, which will allow everyone to easily access it.
There are many tools that will allow you to create quality brand books, such as the following online platforms: Ginger Sauce, Brandtools, Frontify, etc. These digital tools offer the possibility of creating branded books via predefined and customizable templates.
Finally, here are some examples of successful brand books, which can certainly inspire you in the design of your own brand book:
– Skype
https://download.skype.com/share/blogskin/press/skype_brandbook.pdf
– Foursquare
https://playfoursquare.s3.amazonaws.com/press/foursquare-brandbook.pdf
– Mozilla
https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/d/df/Firefox_Brand_Book.pdf