6 Reasons You Need Brand Guidelines (Yep, Even if You’re a Small Business)
Brand guidelines (also referred to as brand books or brand bibles) are essentially the rules for your brand's visual identity, helping ensure that your brand assets are applied how the designer intended and that they are applied consistently.
As your brand grows and you work with more partners, freelancers, and agencies, having guidelines in place makes sure everyone is on the same page. If you're an early-stage brand without a lot of brand assets, it can be tempting to skip this stage to keep design costs low. But the importance of showing up consistently across all customer touch points cannot be overstated, especially if you’re just starting out and don’t have billions to blow on brand awareness.
creates consistency (and consistency converts)
Consistency is a bit of a buzzword. And it can feel like a bit of a buzzkill - rules are made to be broken, surely? So why does it matter?
Consistent brand presentation increases that brand’s revenue by an average of 23%
One of the main jobs of your brand is to stand out and be memorable. And whilst you might think your product is unforgettable, consumers are so bombarded by brands from the time they wake up until they go to bed that it generally takes between 5 and 7 brand impressions for a customer to even remember your brand, let alone convert into a paying customer.
Now imagine if every time they’re seeing your brand you’re using a different font, in a different colour, with a different layout? Chances are they won’t have a strong memory of your brand identity. Ultimately, if you want to increase brand awareness as quickly (and as cheaply) as possible, consistency is key.
2. reinforces trust
When a brand’s identity is cohesive, it allows your brand to appear more reliable and professional. Scatty graphics and colours will give customers the impression that you aren’t a professional business and they might think twice about clicking ‘add to cart’. Having the same look and feel across all your brand touchpoints ensures that everyone who interacts with your brand knows exactly what to expect and can trust that you’ll deliver on your brand promises.
3. establishes positioning
There are a lot of different ways to interpret a brand if you don’t have guidelines. Even two pieces of design that use the same colours and the same fonts can look as though they are talking to two completely different audiences. Having a clear understand of how to employ your individual brand assets, e.g., what font to use for headings, what the colour hierarchy should be, how pattern should be employed etc. will result in a unified visual output that makes it clear who your brand is and who you are talking to.
4. objectifies style
We all think we have great taste. And although there are certain design principles that designers employ, there will always be variation from one designer to the next in terms of style.
If you don't have brand guidelines, when it comes to the application of your brand’s visual identity it’s essentially a total free-for-all. If you invested in a designer or studio that you trust to create your original branding, the last thing you want is a freelancer that you hired to develop some collateral to be playing fast and loose with your brand’s creative direction.
Your branding needs rules so that everyone knows how to execute it properly. You can't expect everyone who works on your marketing materials to have perfect judgment about what is and isn’t in keeping with your visual identity. And it’s important to remember that the question isn’t ‘do this look good’ but rather ‘is this on brand’. Having guidelines means that beauty is not in the eye of the beholder, but actually in the document.
5. keeps you focused
As a business owner, if you see the same colours, the same fonts and the same graphics day in and day out, it can start to feel stale. Heck I’m bored to tears of seeing that shade of Freckle green! It can be tempting to make changes to try and liven things up, a tweak here, a tweak there. But this is where we come back to consistency, and the importance of showing customers the same brand image multiple times to have a hope of them remembering who you are. That’s not to say you can freshen things up from time to time, and unless you’re Coca-Cola level, your guidelines probably have a good amount of flexibility. And if you really feel your current brand isn’t working for you and you do want to refresh your visual identity, then maybe it’s time to call Freckle ;)
6. makes decisions easy (and solves squabbles)
If you’re part of a team, or have a co-founder that you make decisions with, chances are you’ll have disagreements from time to time! And because design is a part of everyday life at a business, from how your investor presentation slides look, to your insta grid, disagreements over how your brand should look can take up a lot of time and energy. If you have a clear set of rules to refer to, it can often solve arguments over ‘which looks best’ without the drama. If you’you’re trying to DIY some graphics on Canva and you can’t tell if the design you’ve created looks crap, then having a set of guidelines to refer to can be really helpful.
ok, but doesn’t this make everything quite boring?
With all of that in mind, we still believe that young brands should be able to take risks, try new things, test the waters see what resonates with their audience. But we think guidelines are a good way of making sure that, like any rebellious teen, you can push the boundaries, but you know where home is. And yes, in this analogy, brand guidelines are home…
And finally…
So in a nutshell - brand guidelines are super important. But it’s worth noting that they don’t have to be 100 page documents where every possible design decision is set in stone. Your brand guidelines could be a few pages of just the core information about your brand assets. And the great thing is they can evolve with you as you grow.