HOW TO CREATE A BRAND BOOK
A brand book is a visual and written document that sets guidelines for your company’s tone, personality, and identity. It is the foundation for a company’s consistent messaging, visual and verbal. It is your brand’s bible and it’s should include three clear parts: About, Communication Guidelines, and Visual Identity. It is used as an internal guideline for employees to have a unified understanding of the brand’s identity. It is also used as an external guideline for how to showcase the brand to consumers and investors. All in all, a key document for business.
ABOUT
Brand Mission: An effective mission statement must be a clear, concise declaration about your business strategy. It must describe your company’s purpose and what difference it is trying to make
Brand Vision & Core Values: Brand’s vision and core values guide the brand and all business decisions. They point the company towards its long-term objectives such as gaining brand awareness, trust, and customers’ loyalty. They must describe the legacy you want your business to leave behind, and attract talent passionate about building this legacy.
Brand Story: Brand Story evokes an emotional reaction and creates a connection between the brand, its stakeholders, and customers. It recounts the events or though that sparked the company’s inception and encounters milestones in the brand’s life. Key Industry Insight
Here is where you show your market research, the current state of your marketplace, key insights you’ve gathered from researching your competitors and a gap you see that could potentially be filled in.
Brand Positioning: Positioning refers to how your company stands out against its competitors. Hone in on the gap it will fill or the reason it will differentiate. Explain what will make consumers pick your company and why.
Audience Segments:Present people, you want to see using your products. What kind of people are they, what are their demographics, psychographics, needs, wants, values — and how do you factor into them? It helps to make a couple of audience personas with defined names and habits, imagine their routine, and explaining where your product or service would fit into it.
Brand Personal: Brand can be thought about as a person with a character and specific traits. Defining those traits creates a guide for your brand’s consistent messaging. A strong brand persona separates you from others in your marketplace and makes it easier for customers to connect and identify with your brand.
COMMUNICATIONS GUIDELINES
Tone of Voice: Your tone of voice needs to be consistent across all communication channels - email, social media, press releases, blog posts, ads, etc. It should be aligned with its persona, mission, vision, values, and target audience. It helps to write out a list of adjectives describing what your brand is and what it isn’t.
Audience Filters:If you created numerous brand personas, here you will identify if your tone of voice or communication strategy will be the same for all or if it will vary based on each persona.
Taglines & Key Messages: You can start by identifying words you like and don't like to be associated with. Then, decide what type of language fits your persona and your target audience.
VISUAL IDENTITY
Here it depends on how design-oriented your company is, you can start with the key sections below and add on company-specific visual guidelines. Defining and outlining them will help create brand consistency across platforms strengthening your brand identity and rapport with the audience.
- Logo — Its placement, Clearspace, variations for different platforms and channels, colors, size, and proportions
- Colors — its rules and usage, Primary and secondary colors as well its monochrome version. Texture or Gradients that you will use.
- Brandmark — its placement and guidelines.
- Typography — Fonts, type hierarchy, and examples.
- Grammar and formatting — abbreviations, numbers, capitalization, acronyms, times, and titles.
- Editorial style guide — Its style and guidelines used for consistent presentation, usage and kind of photography guidelines, formatting, and structure for blog posts. Social Media — posting guidelines, visual identity, and strategy. You can include post and layout examples and Profile and Banner photos here.
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Written By Dana M