If you’ve ever worked on a branding project, you’ve likely heard of brand guidelines. Brand guidelines, sometimes also known as brand standards or brand books, are a set of rules and instructions that define how a company presents itself visually to the world. They help to establish the visual identity of a brand, ensuring consistency across all channels and touchpoints.

Believe it or not, brand guidelines are a vital component of a company’s branding strategy. They provide a framework for designers, marketers, and other stakeholders to use when creating new materials, ensuring that every piece of communication reflects the brand’s personality and values.

What Do Brand Guidelines Cover?

Brand guidelines typically include a wide range of information, from colour palettes and typography to logo usage and tone of voice. Here are some of the key components of a typical brand guidelines document:

Logo Guidelines: This section outlines how the logo should be used and provides guidelines on size, placement, and colour usage.

Colour palette: A brand’s colour palette is crucial to its visual identity. This section outlines the colours that should be used across all brand communications, including primary, secondary, and tertiary colours.

Typography: The typography used by a brand should be consistent across all materials. This section provides guidelines on the fonts that should be used, as well as information on size, weight, and spacing.

Imagery: Brand guidelines also include guidelines on the types of imagery that should be used, as well as how they should be treated (e.g., colour treatments, cropping, etc.).

Tone of voice: A brand’s tone of voice is just as important as its visual identity. This section generally provides guidance on the language and tone that should be used in all communications, from marketing materials to social media posts.

Why are Brand Guidelines Important?

Brand guidelines play a critical role in establishing a brand’s visual identity and maintaining consistency across all communications. Here are some of the key benefits of having brand guidelines:

Consistency: Brand guidelines ensure that every communication looks and feels like it comes from the same company, creating a sense of familiarity and trust with consumers.

Efficiency: With clear guidelines in place, designers and marketers can work more efficiently, knowing exactly what they need to do to create on-brand communications.

Brand recognition: A consistent visual identity helps consumers recognise a brand more quickly, leading to increased brand awareness and loyalty.

Differentiation: In a crowded market, a strong visual identity can help a brand stand out from the competition, making it more memorable to consumers.

In conclusion, brand guidelines are a crucial component of a brand’s visual identity. They provide a framework for designers and marketers to create consistent, on-brand communications, helping to establish brand recognition, increase efficiency, and differentiate the brand from competitors. If you haven’t yet developed brand guidelines for your company, now is the time to start!

Looking for Design Support?

If you are considering working with a design agency, PHd Design might be the right fit for your business and brand’s needs. Our award-winning design team have been delighting clients for just over 30 years, and our studio is ranked in the top 100 of all creative agencies in the UK.

If you would like to learn more about working with us on your next infographic or design project, please get in touch.

Not quite ready to discuss a project with us? Why not join our fortnightly newsletter to keep up to date with the latest studio news, and get updates on the latest articles, giveaways and special offers from PHd Design – click here to subscribe.

When most business owners think about graphic design, they think about their business logos. A business logo is just one of the final products that an agency produces, along with your brochures, banners and websites. And although you know why your business needs these items, do you know why you should choose an expert graphic design agency to create them?

What a Graphic Design Agency Does

Graphic design agencies, like PHd Design in Lichfield, are creative. Our team are also artistic and technical. But there is a lot more to graphic design than that. We are also experts in communication, marketing and perhaps most importantly, psychology.

We understand that human beings are very visual. We respond to pictures and colours on an emotional level before our thought processes can jump in. You’ve heard the one about judging a book by its cover. It’s true. We make a judgement call on whether we want to pick up a book by its front, watch a film based on the poster, buy a product because we like the packaging and so on. All of these judgments are decisions influenced by details such as the colours used, the type and even size of the font, the placement of the letters and the choice of image.

As graphic designers, we understand how each of these elements will impact on a person’s emotions and influence their choices and decisions.

How Graphic Design Helps Your Business

As every business owner knows, first impressions matter. Whether it’s from meeting you and assessing your clothes, the words you use during networking, or the first page of your website, our subconscious starts filing away details about you that makes decisions on whether you are a business we can buy from.

You need to decide what you want the first impression of your business to be – corporate, friendly or fun, perhaps. Do you want potential clients to feel secure in placing their money with you, or confident that you’re technically efficient, or that you’ll provide a safe, happy environment for their children?

The design of your logo, brochures and leaflets will create your professional image before a single word is read.

Building Brand Awareness

It’s not enough to simply create the right impression, you need your potential new customers to remember it. Every time a client sees your logo or a social media post, for example, the aim is that they recognised it’s you straightaway, and for that first impression and confidence in you to be reinforced.

The more you build your brand awareness, the more well-known and memorable your business will be. Consistency in the design of your marketing and content ensures that your brand becomes stronger each time it’s used. This means that whenever someone sees your brand, they also think of the things you want connected to you – professionalism, positivity, vibrancy, proactivity, and trust.

It’s a lot for a piece of design work to do – which is why you need to choose the right graphic design agency in the first place.

Communication Through Graphic Design

Of course, graphic design agencies don’t just work on your business image or create lasting impressions. Strong clear design is also key to communication. Take, for example, a fire exit sign. This very simple image – a strong colour, internationally recognised to mean ‘go’, and a single running figure – can be recognised in any language.

A control pad for machinery, warning lights on your car, and even the instructions that come with your flat-pack furniture – are all examples of graphic design work that communicates a universally understood message without words. If you have a website or are creating an app, the design is vital to helping visitors find their way around, with clear layouts, obvious buttons and easy steps to your key message. Here, graphic design is used to create a positive user experience.

In business, your communications will be more complex than a simple ‘run this way’ instruction. You will need to explain detailed statistics in an infographic or intricate ideas in a combination of words and pictures. You may want to ensure that the product you are selling appears luxurious and expensive, and the right branding will help to communicate this message.

Graphic design is used to help you communicate visually, clearly and in such a way that your audience understands your message. The layout of the information, the colours and the imagery all combine to ensure that vital details are clear and the reader is not overwhelmed.

Choosing the Right Graphic Design Agency

When you consider just how important graphic design is in making your business stand out, you can see why you need to use the right agency for the job. PHd Design is a graphic design agency in Lichfield in Staffordshire, and work on projects for companies all around the UK. We love what we do – being creative and using our magic design skills to communicate on your behalf. We do branding, infographics, packaging, digital design and so on. But do you now know the main thing that we do for you – and why graphic design is important to your business? We help you to sell.

Looking for Design Support?

If you are considering working with a design agency, PHd Design might be the right fit for your business and brand’s needs. Our award-winning design team have been delighting clients for just over 30 years, and our studio is ranked in the top 100 of all creative agencies in the UK.

If you would like to learn more about working with us on your next infographic or design project, please get in touch.

Not quite ready to discuss a project with us? Why not join our fortnightly newsletter to keep up to date with the latest studio news, and get updates on the latest articles, giveaways and special offers from PHd Design – click here to subscribe.