Branding and Corporate Identity Guidelines

I get asked by a lot of people if I have any branding and corporate identity guidelines. What exactly is branding? How do I go about designing a corporate identity? etc…

Most people start with a logo, but don’t really know if it is suitable, how to apply it to all the different branding elements or why it’s not working. Designing a logo without an underlying strategy is kind of like driving to Sydney without a map. You might get there, but more by luck than design.

So how do I develop a branding strategy? Are there any branding and corporate identity guidelines?

The good news is: yes. Read on…

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In a nutshell, the branding process can be divided into three steps.

1. Develop a Brand Personality
2. Build Brand Architecture
3. Set and Maintain Brand Standards

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Let’s look at each one of those in detail:

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1. Develop a Brand Personality

All the great brands have a strong and identifiable personality. Volvo = safe, Apple = cool, Tonka = tough for example. Where possible, you should try and “own” a word in your niche. There should be clear and defined personality that you are trying to communicate with the logo and corporate identity, and this is hard for a lot of start-up businesses. They’re a newborn baby trying to work out who they want to be when they grow up, so think of it as giving them something to aspire to. From this unique personality comes a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Your client is a plumbing contractor. What makes him different to the 47 other plumbing contractors in the paper? Again, extracting this information is very difficult, but needs to be done if the business and the brand is going to be successful. Once you have established your brand’s personality and USP, you can start designing, knowing that the hard work is behind you.

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2. Build Brand Architecture

A great logo is a good start, but branding is much more about conveying the personality of a business or product than just applying a logo. Every time a consumer comes into contact with a brand, it’s called a brand “touch point”. It may be the website, the company receptionist, a vending machine, a letter from the company, a visit by a sales rep, to how easy it is to park out the front of the premises. All of these brand touch points must communicate and reinforce the brand personality. Everything from internal systems to external advertising must be built on the foundation of your brand’s personality.

Think about the cheeky signage at the terminal when you board a Virgin Blue flight. Think about how cool the packaging for your Apple product is. It all reinforces the brand’s vision. Essential. So try and think about the overall personality when applying your branding, and consistency is the key. Which brings us nicely to point number three.

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3. Set and Maintain Brand Standards

Once the hard work of designing and bulding a brand is done, it needs to be maintained. There’s nothing worse than a once great brand that starts to let the customer down. Not meeting expectations is worse than having no expectations in the first place. If a brand is no longer working, it’s time to rebrand and reposition, rather than just “let it slide”.

As a designer, the most common brand management tool is a style guide. Coles Myer has an internal style guide that is many 100s of pages. If you’re the designer responsible for designing a corporate identity in the first place, you should also outline how that identity should be maintained and developed over time. If the company is large, there should also be training and monitoring. Griffith University and the Mater Hospital for example, both have external relations departments responsible for checking and approving all corporate communications material against their brand standards guide. It’s time-consuming but essential for maintaining a brand’s integrity.

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I hope these branding and corporate identity guidelines have been useful. Please feel free to add a comment if you have one.