Qualities of an Amazing Branding Guide

Creating a brand guide for your company is never an easy task. It can be even more difficult when you are starting from scratch. The first thing to do would be to study the brand guides of established companies. In this post, we will go through a few branding guide examples and see how you can use the ideas implemented by them.

First of all, there are three traits that all effective branding guides have in common:

Inform

All effective branding guides do a great job of informing their audience about the brand and the idea behind it. One important thing to keep in mind is that you have to know what your audience looks for in brand standards. For example, if your main consumers are going to be designers, then you must make sure that the brand guide is visually quite detailed. A different approach would be needed if your main consumers were to be sportspersons. Here are a few brands that do a great job at being informative:

• Adobe: Their 60-page brand guide is one of the most detailed and exhaustive documents of its type. They knew that the main market for them would be developers, and they have designed the guide to suit that particular taste.
• Firefox: The Firefox guide aims at communicating ideas in an efficient manner. The text and documents are not as extensive as Adobe’s. But they are still very creative and make sure that all the information is conveyed properly without becoming too stuffy.

Inspire

Inspiring the team and company is an essential aspect of any branding guide. Without a great band, ideas and corporations tend to be monotonous. A company needs to have its own unique personality, and this should be evident in the branding guide. After all, inspiring the team in the whole point of a brand. A few examples of brands that understand this concept:

• Skype: The Skype branding guide does a great job of explaining the Skype cloud and showing all the applications that are possible with it. A designer going through this will immediately feel a tinge of inspiration while looking at these options.
• Easy.com: The branding guide of this company offers a very clean and articulate voice that immediately defines the personality of the organization.

Enforce

It is also the function of a good buying guide to enforce the dos and don’ts of the company policy. For example,

• Apple: Apple is a company that is famous for the measures it takes to protect its products. Going through its branding guide will show you how seriously they take it.
• Facebook: Facebook’s branding guide can be quite strict for a company that is all about creating a people’s network. You will find a number of rules and policies that should be adhered to.

Hopefully, this post would have helped you increase your understanding of branding guides. Remember, the best way to learn something new is to carefully study successful models from the past.

If you’re looking to create your own branding guide, be sure to check out Finding Brand: The Brand Book Tutorial , by our co-founder, Tisha Oehmen.