As our main deliverable for this module, I have decided to dedicate this blog post to brand guideline documents, what is included within these documents, what they are for and how they can differ from brand to brand.

As my main research material for this piece, I used:

• New York City Transit Authority – Graphics Standards Manual
• NASA – Graphics Standards Manual
• Channel 4 – Identity Style Guide
• Belfast School of Art – Brand Handbook
• Ulster University – Brand Guidelines – 2015
• Ulster University – Brand Book – 2022

What is in a name?

As you can see from the documents I used as my main source material for this piece, there is no single name given to brand guideline documents. They can have different names depending on the brand they are for. Although the name can indicate different contents as well, I will discuss further what brand guideline documents contain later in this piece. In the case of my examples, Graphics Standards Manuals are rules relating to the reproduction of graphic materials, from signs, vehicle liveries, uniforms, press releases etc. in my case both manuals would now be out of date as they are from the seventies and eighties. Brand Handbook, Brand Guidelines and Brand Book are interchangeable terms and go into much more detail about the brand and its values. They place more emphasis on how these values are communicated through reproducing the brand in many different forms including: written, image and video. An identity style guide seems to sit in between a Graphics Standards Manual and a Brand Handbook, it discusses brand values but not in any detail. Discussion of these values is kept to purely how they relate to tone of voice or other parts of creating content containing the brand. In comparison to a separate section explaining the values, telling the brand story and mission. For this semester what I have produced for my own bank brand has most in common with a brand handbook as I do go into detail about my brand values, story and mission statement.

What do all Brand Guideline Documents Contain

From looking at all six of the example documents listed above there are certain aspects of a brand that all guidelines contain. These are mainly the visual elements of a brand: Typography, Brand Colours and Logomarks/Brandmarks. These are shown in the documents with lots of technical details on their use. In the case of typography this includes when you should use each typeface, full letter and character sets of each typeface, differing weights of the typeface and their use and letter spacing information. For Colour, the information includes Hex codes and RGB values for digital reproduction, as well as CYMK for printing and in some case Pantone colours as well. The choice of what colour definitions to include depends mainly on what mediums the brand is expected to be reproduced in. For example, in the NASA Graphics Standards Manual there is emphasis in ensuring the correct reproduction of colour across several physical mediums, such as paper, signage, paint and uniforms. They even provide tear out swatches that can be taken and used to create accurate colour matches at printers and manufacturers. Whereas in the Belfast School of Art Brand Handbook we see the emphasis has changed to provide Hex codes and RGB values for digital reproduction as well as Pantone and CYMK values for printed materials. This is purely related to the fact that the Belfast School of Art expects to produce most of their branded material digitally in the modern world compared to NASA. In the case of brandmarks, significant detail is placed on how they are reproduced, some brands have multiple brandmarks and each of these will be covered in detail. There is also space given to examples of the brandmark being used correctly and incorrectly, this gives a clear reference as to how to and not to use each brandmark.

Other Common contents of Brand Guideline Documents

While the graphics standards manuals tend to stick to these three main areas (along with lots of examples of these areas in practical use). More modern brand guideline documents contain more information, including guidelines on how to use imagery, motion (this is where an identity style guide bows out), tone of voice, brand values, a brand story and a mission statement. This extra material gives much more of a personality to a brand and offers anyone using the document a real background to the brand. How to represent the brand accurately and how the brand wants to position itself in the world. As well as what the brand feels are the important elements of the brand to reinforce. For me I feel as if this extra information would be hugely useful as a designer, as by immersing myself within a brand and what that brand feels is important. I believe creating a design piece that fits the brand much easier than just cold facts on what typeface and colours to use. This movement to providing a brand with a personality across all mediums is still spoken about in the older documents for example, NASA speak about how removing the crossbars in the “A”s of their brandmark as; “imparting a vertical thrust to the logotype and lends it a quality of uniqueness and contemporary character”. They simply do not place as much emphasis on making sure users of the manual are aware of this and its importance to the brand. We can see modern brands understand the importance of these details in the fact that modern guidelines place the values, story and mission at the start of there documents, whereas for NASA it is simply a sidenote to showing the brandmark. The last thing that some brands will add in their guideline documents are the grid systems they use to layout specific types of content. For the older documents this would have concentrated mainly on printed and physical materials. Whereas more modern brands will consider web design, social media posts as well as printed materials.

Conclusion

Brand Guideline documents can be a complex area with different brands having different requirements the documents are often suited to the brand’s needs. When creating these documents, it is imperative to understand what applications the brand will use and include these and leave out those that are not going to be used. While older documents were very much concerned with ensuring the design decisions made by the brand were reproduced accurately and without variance. More modern guidelines provide information on the brand’s values so that anyone either internal or external can quickly get a feel for the brand and produce content that fits the brand. In a world where new mediums the brand may need products for is a constant factor, this allows people to create appropriate content designs that fit within the guidelines. That the designers that developed the guidelines could not have considered as they did not exist at the time of writing.  This allows brands to react quicker to new trends without needing to go back and create a whole new set of guidelines every time a new social media site for example, becomes popular. At worst this information will provide guidance in the interim before new guidelines can be created.

Brand Guidelines have been essential to brands ensuring consistency across all mediums for decades and they are only becoming more important as brands must adapt to ever more mediums that they need to produce content for.