Brands and their branding elements are becoming the main focus areas in businesses in today’s economic society. According to Anthem Branding, “77 percent of marketers say that branding is critical to future growth.”
This is a huge percentage to consider. You may be thinking, “Where do I even start with branding?” or “How would I even pull something together to include all of our business’ branding elements?”
Perfect Afternoon suggests creating a brand book to ensure your business incorporates great branding. This comprehensive, detailed guide helps your business create or enhance partnerships, and it’s one of the main tangible assets we find most valuable for our clients.
Then, you may ask, “Isn’t that something bigger corporations only need?” The answer is no! Brand books are an integral tool for the messaging of any business, no matter the size or the industry!
What is a brand book?
A brand book can seem like an enigmatic, high-design tool that is only really applicable when discussing the brand’s logos and colors for larger companies and corporations. However, it’s so much more than just the design elements at play in your brand!
Think of your brand book as a liaison. It represents the same gesture as sending a manager to work with an advertising company to ensure they know how to represent your brand properly or having a senior employee familiar with your brand train a new hire on how your business presents itself.
Your brand book contains everything you would want someone working with your brand to know. If you submit a small ad in a local paper, you will send your brand book to the advertisement company as a guide to ensure it will look like the rest of your branding materials!
What’s in it?
To ensure that your brand book properly reflects all its elements, you will want to add more robust details than logos and colors. The true value of a brand book is all of the other pages detailing who the company is and how it is presented.
We believe your brand book should include your brand’s mission statement. This statement shows the motivation behind why you do what you do. Additionally, write a section discussing your brand’s tone. This is great when you need to hire a copywriter — you can hand off the brand book, and they will know how to represent your business through writing.
Each component within the brand book works to inform the consistency and cohesion of your brand across all messaging, whether visual, textual, or audio. The content of each brand book fluctuates slightly depending on your brand’s focus. For instance, PA has a section dedicated to iconography since our brand utilizes it quite a bit, but we know this type of branding does not apply to every brand.
We’ve combined a list of extra elements to add to a brand book after establishing a baseline of what to include:
- Brand Elements
- Brand History
- Brand Values
- Brand Personality / Tone
- Logo Definitions
- Logo Spacing
- Logo Variations
- Logo Uses
- Logo Misuses
- Color Palette
- Typography
- Marketing Collateral
- Business Cards
- Sell Sheets
- Brand Guide Uses
Once your brand book is created, you have set in stone the brand elements that should be incorporated across all communication channels. Your business can now feel confident in hiring a designer to take on some graphic work because you can hand them everything they’ll need to keep it on-brand. The book, in and of itself, is a statement on how you like things to be presented in a print format. A great deal of style can be derived from how elements are laid out from page to page.
Our team at PA, especially the Creative team, is excited when clients come to us with a fully developed brand book. This equips us as an agency to fully understand the brand while making an even more well-suited design!
Start the creative brand book process today
Interested in having a brand book for your brand? It will help your business maintain consistency through its online and print messaging and design. We have helped many small and large companies solidify their brand stance and feel more confident in their messaging.
Get in touch with PA to sculpt your brand into a true masterpiece!
Photo Credit: Envato Elements
