Remember that the purpose of your brand identity guidelines should be to help anyone quickly get familiar with your brand strategy, and understand how it translates to creative work.
For example, if part of your brand personality was ‘strong, but not aggressive’ – what the heck does that mean for someone choosing a stock photo?
Brand identity guidelines might take up the majority of space in the overall brand strategy you’ve developed, because design elements are bigger than brand statements. If you include samples of logos, typography, and photography, it does add a lot of pages – but the document is still super easy to digest.
A. Legal Guidelines
Anything legally required by your business, or boards and agencies that govern your business or industry, needs to be clearly stated up front. This is applicable to both design and copy.
It might include:
- Describing legal usage rights of your logo, and logos of any partners, sponsors, or other parties included in your digital assets
- Noting or link to any legal requirements from governing boards or agencies
- Notes on which types of stock photos your company will use (such as common vs. licensed for commercial use)
- Notes on how to indicate the source on various content mediums for copyrighted material (such as photos or GIFs)
- Any required legal language that must appear next to or under your content
- Be sure to include a list of approved sources, if your business is strict on where stats can be sourced
These are just a few examples to get you thinking of what might be applicable to your business. How much information you need in the legal section, if any at all, will depend on your industry.
B. Design Guidelines
When it comes to capturing the essence of your brand, looks definitely matter. How your business is perceived is heavily influenced by images, colours — study up on colour psychology! — and typography.
Media is usually what stops a user from casually browsing and earns that precious click.
Using the personality traits identified in your branding exercises, you should be able to build out a complete design section for your brand identity guidelines. It can be helpful to repeat the personality traits at the top of this section, for quick reference by designers and writers.
These are common pieces you might include in the visual identity section of your guidelines:
- Logo and usage
- Brand colours
- Typography
- Photography, illustration, and stock
Logo and Usage
This one is pretty obvious – you want to share your logo in its various forms, and guidelines for its usage.
- Include all versions of your logo if you have different ones for various uses (such as full, simplified for smaller spaces, versions for use on light vs. dark backgrounds, social media banner sizes, and square social media profile sizes)
- Describe any legal restrictions on manipulating the logo beyond approved formats, such as changing the dimensions or colours
Brand Colours
In this section, you want to describe the exact colours associated with your business. It’s helpful to recap why those colours are chosen for your brand personality, and what they’re meant to represent or what emotional reaction they should evoke.
- Include a sample palette if possible, with colour hex codes
- Note which colours are used for which purposes (such as backgrounds, accents, or overlays)
- Indicate any restrictions on using variations of shade or tone
- Indicate any guidelines for social media filter usage to enforce a branded profile
Typography
One of the coolest things about WordPress websites is that you can lock in typography for every possible copy element. That way anyone creating new website content will always use the right typeface for headlines, buttons, and body copy.
But if you don’t have a WordPress website, or if you have digital assets that can’t be controlled by a template, it’s great to have typography guidelines. This will prevent someone from using a hated font.
- List approved typefaces or families, including weight and size if applicable
- Specify usage if applicable (such as sans serif for headlines, serif for body copy)
Photography, Illustration, and Stock
Images can say as much about your business as colors because they create huge emotional reactions. This is why it’s important to outline your rules for photos, illustrations, and stock photos or images.
- Recap your brand personality traits, and the tone that photos and illustrations should capture
- Specify important details about photo usage: do you only use company-owned photos; do you have quality guidelines; do you use photos of people outside the company such as customers and if so, how are permissions collected; what kind of representation do you want in photos
- For some industries, you might need to include the location (such as only using photos depicting your city or region)
- Include any different photo guidelines for social media (such as if you only use edited/branded photos or if raw/candid photos are also an option)
- Be sure to document anything you absolutely don’t want to see in photos – this can matter a lot in certain industries
- Indicate any preferences for illustration styles, and any that you don’t want used
- Include any notes on what you want to be used and don’t want to be used for icons
There are lots of helpful resources for the design section of your brand identity guidelines, such as this guide from Canva. You can also create internal design checklists with marketing templates like the ones shared by Venngage and made specifically for remote teams.
A new web designer on the team should be able to easily use this section to source appropriate stock photography, or style a new page for your website.
C. Copy Guidelines
Design and copy are a one-two punch! If images and video stop a potential customer from scrolling, a copy is what reels them in. You often have a limited space to convey both your message and why the user should care about your brand, so getting your copy on point is a big deal.
It all comes down to consistency in your voice, tone, and style.
Just like how your website, social media, email, and other digital content should feel similar to walking into a physical location of your business, your digital copy should all feel like a real conversation you’d have with a customer.
Voice and tone in writing are how you convey personality and mood. They are majorly different between industries, companies, and audiences. A lifestyle brand isn’t going to write the same way as a law firm or construction company. But two different construction companies will have different personalities based on their purpose, team, and customers.
Unfortunately, voice and tone are often overlooked in brand guidelines in favor of design specifications. But the words you use directly impact how your business is perceived. They can help evoke authenticity, build trust, and move a person closer to conversion – or totally put people off. You need to have a plan for your copy!
Here’s what to include in your voice, tone, and style guidelines.
Voice
Voice is all about personality, and the language you choose. It should reflect the way your customers speak, so that your words feel familiar.
Think of the voice a visitor to your website will hear in their head as they read your copy. Is this person professional or chill? Polished or fun? Which famous character would narrate your company’s content?
Voice should match your company’s purpose. And if you did branding exercises at the start of your guidelines, you’ll have all the direction you need.
Tone
Tone is the mood of your content. You absolutely have to consider your audience’s needs to establish your tone.
If your website’s visitors are likely to be experiencing stress or personal trauma, overly chipper messaging might seem insensitive. A somber and institutional vibe probably wouldn’t sell outdoor adventure products to young people.
Style
Style is where you lay down the law about language. It’s establishing a set of rules around the vocabulary used in your content.
Should your brand use technical language, plain English, slang, pop culture references, or emojis? Do you adhere to a specific rule set for grammar and punctuation, like the Canadian Press or Associated Press standards?
Also decide if you should have slightly different copy guidelines for social media and emails, or if that messaging should exactly match your website.
A quick Internet search will turn up plenty of examples and templates for writers, to help you solidify your copy guidelines. A simple list is fine. Your guidelines should make it easy for anyone from your CEO to a new copywriter to be able to write a public-facing message on behalf of your business.
We hope you feel excited about doing branding work for your business! Developing a brand strategy and brand identity guidelines is no simple task. But once it’s done, you shouldn’t have to go through the process again for many years.
The powerful documentation that comes out of branding work can save tons of future time, hassle, and even PR nightmares. That’s why it’s such an important investment for your business.
