5 Questions to Consider When Building Brand Identity Guidelines

Creating a framework that will serve as a support system for your brand.

As a marketer, I’ve learned that building onto a project can be easy once the idea lightbulb goes off above your head. Bits and pieces start coming together, and what started out a simple thought becomes something much more significant in no time.

However, as time goes by, ideas change and evolve, they get scrapped and even forgotten. That is why taking on an important project, such as building a brand, requires a framework that will serve as a support system.

This is where the powers of branding guidelines come in to save the day. Strong guidelines provide a clear direction and contribute to a system of quality control for everything that relates to your brand.

The guidelines that you design for your brand should hold answers to important questions about the purpose and core identity of the organization.

It all starts with a vision

A clear vision describes everything that someone needs to know about a brand, no matter if they’re a long-time insider or they are hearing about it for the first time.

Your brand vision is where all brand-related activities should stem from. It is something that everyone in your network should recognize and care about. That includes your whole team, your partners, and your customers.

1. What do you want to achieve with your brand?

To know the answer to this question is to know what traits and values your brand needs to develop to succeed. It will make the decisions easier when you’re trying to choose a direction along the way.

Connect, to communicate

The work on your brand’s guidelines starts internally, but ultimately, it’s all about the effort that you put towards building great relationships.

To give life to your vision, you need to be able to successfully communicate your brand identity and everything that it stands for. That is why the next section of your brand guidelines is all about the essence of the identity.

All communication naturally happens through connection. There are three ways you can connect and communicate with your audience: emotionally, intellectually, and visually.

2. What emotions do you want your brand to evoke in people?

Emotional connection happens when strong feelings are present about the subject in question. It gives the customer a reason to choose your brand beyond the point of simple consumption.

With the wide variety of products, services, and information out here to choose from, emotional investment has a big factor in consumer decisions. The feelings and emotions that a consumer attaches to your brand is the invisible feature that can make or break the relationship.

3. What does your brand voice “sound” like?

Intellectual connection happens with relevant mental stimulation. It comes in the form of ideas and thoughts that are important to both you and your consumer.

Self-expression is a large part of modern culture. Consumers expect brands to take a stand and contribute to their community in a meaningful way. Depending on the type of brand in question, this can range from important topics — such as social or political standing — to something less serious or even playful.

4. How do you visually represent the brand identity?

Visual connection happens through the use of visual cues and imagery. The way that a brand looks can contribute to setting the mood from the start.

The colors, visual language, and aesthetics that you use to paint your brand identity, products, and content should be well designed and coherent with your brand’s values.

For your brand to communicate the vision successfully, these connections need to work well together. Your job is to plan for all three and build a system that gives potential consumers a chance to react and discover their unique connection with your brand.

Make your own rules

When you have a vision and a plan on how to communicate it, move on to a formula for application. In other words, you need to outline all the ways that you’ll be practicing your vision to create results in the world.

5. How are you going to practice your brand vision?

You create these results through everything you do with your brand. That includes the products you offer, the content you produce, how you contribute to your community, and so on.

Here are a few ideas on how you can document your guidelines:

• Create a style guide that shows how brand visuals are used.

• Make a do’s and don’ts list to outline rules that everyone should follow.

• Put together a gallery with examples of your work.

• Create a brand identity sheet where you describe your vision, along with social bios, taglines, websites, and so on.

Building your brand identity guidelines is almost like setting goals about the impact that you want to have on the world.

There is no one-size-fits-all framework that you must use to build a strong drive behind your brand. Just focus on your vision, find the right way to connect with your people, and go on to achieve great things from there.