Branding basics. What to start with?

Arta Citko
Jul 27, 2018
4 min read

Updated: 6 days ago

This article is for startups, founders, self-employed and basically any new company or project manager.

We are going to very briefly look at:

1. what creates your brand image (personal or company brand),

2. why you need to keep it consistent,

3. how can a style guide help here,

4. what to include in your first style guide,

5. how to use it.

Your branding = Your image

If marketing is more about what you say, then branding is more about how others see you. Your image. (Btw, not only how they see, but also hear and what emotions you radiate.)

a visual explaining difference between marketing and branding

Also, branding is about where you are placed in the mind of your target market. In smart & heavy strategic brand management books it is called positioning. And associations play a big role here.

So, in short, your branding = your image

Got it? Cool. Let’s move on.

Consistency = Memorability

After you create an image that fits and represents your thing, use that image consistently. What do I mean by that? Size, layout, format may be different, but main elements remain consistent - same fonts, same colour palette, same tone of voice, same mood etc.

Consistency helps your brand to be easily recognised and recalled. In contrary, an inconsistent image is like having a friend, and every time you meet her, she’s a different person. You don’t want that, right?

And more.. this combination (image + consistency) along with some other additions, increases brand equity and at the end of the day makes you more $$$

Why you need a style guide

A style-guide can help you (and your company) to maintain a consistent brand image.

Given as a cheat-sheet to new employees, freelancers and even used by yourself gives everyone:

1. clarity about what visual elements and tone of voice to use in communication with the customer, what emotions to evoke,

2. understanding of how a poster, facebook event cover or presentation should look like,

3. decreases number of on revisions,

4. saves time on having to describe the company image and feel for each new person again and again.

Characteristics

When thinking about your brand and how to describe it think about these 3 aspects: visuals, voice & emotion. It is what really builds the brand persona.

Think - if your brand was a person how might it look like, how might it sound like, what emotions might it radiate? This way of thinking may help you to come up with colours, symbols, font style, tone of voice, mission statement etc.

Main parts of a basic brand style guide

Here is a list of things to include in a basic style guide:

name, tagline
mission, vision, tone of voice (optional)
logo full version & logo icon – used on light & dark backgrounds
colour palette + colour codes
fonts (for headlines & body copy)
graphic elements & icons
photo and/or illustrations style (optional)
examples of the visuals (social media post, presentation slide, business card, etc.)
contacts & links (who to contact about design & work files + links to logo/font/image folder)

Below is an example – 4 pages of a 10-page style guide I created for European Voluntary Service project Hidden Places. There you can see the examples of logo versions, logo on different colours, graphic elements and colors with colour codes.

You can quickly set up 10 pages. I use Adobe Illustrator. You can use Canva, PowerPoint or Keynote. Or ask me and I will help you to create one!

You can actually start with 1 page - the Brand Summary Poster I posted earlier. It is a very simple branding one-pager. You can download, print it and fill it. Instructions usually are not needed but are included just in case.

Brand touchpoints

Your target audience meets your brand through brand touch-points.

Brand touch-points are basically just channels (like email, social media etc) through which your brand character interacts with your target audience a.k.a. customer character.

Here is a list of brand touch-points:

social media
email
in-person events
online events
videos
printed media
direct sales
customer support
packaging
affiliates
chat
internally in the company
blog
etc.

Think about which channels you might use first. Remember you will eventually adjust your brand image to all of them. At the beginning just pick a few & think about how the visuals may look like, what the message in each is going to be. For example facebook cover, branded t-shirt & a business card.

You can later also add visual examples or text scripts to the style guide. That can be extremely helpful to whoever will be using the style-guide later.