A strong brand is one that’s clearly differentiated and consistent.

Your brand is essentially your organisational personality. And the one quality that will truly help a brand work its way in to the public consciousness is consistency – in the way a brand looks, talks and feels like to experience.

Brand guidelines represent a set of groundrules and pointers that help you avoid misuse of the brand, as well as duplication of effort – and they are especially important if your organisation has different staff, departments and suppliers all communicating the brand.

Above all, brand guidelines need to be practical. They can cover everything from the mission and values of your brand, to examples of tone of voice and messaging. However, the principle job of guidelines is to show exactly how the brand can and cannot be visually applied – to everything from stationery and posters to your website.

Specific pointers might include:

• How much space needs to be left around the logo?
• What type of photography do we use? Lifestyle or candid?
• How are colours and typography to be applied in different media?
• How does your logo sit with funders’ logos (on literature, for example)?

Macmillan have a whole, comprehensive website - be.Macmillan - dedicated to explaining their branding and identity for their supporters. Take a look, as it provides useful notes on what they stand for and both visual and verbal identity.
 

Do it yourself?

Brand guidelines need be no more than a page or two long – infact the shorter the better because they must be easy and practical for people to use. Just make sure you cover the main areas of logo, type, colour, image use and accessibility. You don’t even need to print them: a PDF will usually suffice.