Branding
A brand book is made with great care. The logo gets a clear space, the colours get codes, the typefaces get a hierarchy. The document is approved, sent round as a PDF, and then opened by almost no one.
Until someone needs to make a presentation. Then it turns out the brand book says nothing about that, and everyone starts copying from last year's deck.
In this article: what a brand book is, what belongs in it, and which chapter almost every brand book leaves out.
What is a brand book?
A brand book is the document that sets out how your brand looks and sounds, with rules and examples anyone can follow. It is also called brand guidelines, a brand guide, a style guide or a brand manual. The names are used interchangeably and in practice mean the same thing.
The goal is simple: a brochure from marketing, a proposal from sales and a job ad from HR should all be recognisably from the same company, even when three different people made them.
Visual identity, brand guidelines or brand book: what is the difference?
The visual identity is the look itself: the logo, the colours, the typefaces, the imagery.
Brand guidelines set out how to use that visual identity. What is allowed, what is not, and what it looks like in practice.
A brand book often goes a step further and starts with the brand: what you stand for, what you promise and how you speak. The visual identity follows.
For most organisations one document is enough, with the brand at the front and the visual identity behind it.
What makes up a visual identity?
A visual identity has six parts:
Logo, with its variants
Colours
Typography
Imagery: photography, illustration and icons
Graphic elements, such as shapes, lines and patterns
Tone of voice: how you write and speak
Not every brand has all six worked out. Logo, colour and typography are the minimum.
What goes in a brand book?
A good brand book has ten chapters. They do not all need to be long.
1. The brand in brief. What you stand for and who for. One page. This is the reason behind every rule that follows.
2. Logo. The variants (horizontal, stacked, symbol only), the clear space around it, the minimum size and what is not allowed: stretching, recolouring, placing it on a busy photo.
3. Colour. Every colour with HEX, RGB, CMYK and Pantone where relevant. More important than the codes is the balance: which colour leads, which is an accent, and which combinations are not legible.
4. Typography. Which typefaces you use for headings and body text, at what sizes, and which typeface to use when the brand font is not available. That last point is often forgotten and is the first place things go wrong.
5. Imagery. What kind of photos fit the brand, what illustrations look like, which icon set you use. With examples of right and wrong.
6. Graphic elements. Shapes, lines or patterns that make the brand recognisable, and how to apply them.
7. Tone of voice. How you write: formal or informal, short or detailed. A few example sentences say more than a list of adjectives.
8. Applications. The identity in use: business card, letterhead, email signature, social media, website, trade show stand.
9. Presentations. The chapter that is almost always missing. See below.
10. Governance. Who owns it, where the files live, and which version is current.
The chapter that is almost always missing: presentations
In many organisations the presentation is the most frequently produced expression of the brand. Sales make one every week, management every quarter, HR for every onboarding day. They are made by people who are not designers, under time pressure, in PowerPoint.
And PowerPoint does not read PDFs. A colour code in a brand book does not appear in the colour menu by itself. A brand font that is not installed on a client's laptop gets replaced by something else, and the whole layout shifts.
That is why presentations deserve a chapter of their own, covering:
The colour theme as PowerPoint uses it. Two colours for text and background and six accent colours, in a fixed order. That order decides which colour a chart gets automatically.
Typefaces with a fallback. The brand font where possible, and a standard font that works everywhere for files that leave the building.
The slide layouts. Title slide, section slide, text with image, chart, quote, closing. With an example of how each layout is meant to be used.
Charts and tables. Which colours in which order, and what a table looks like.
Images and icons on slides. Which crop, which icon set, how much imagery per slide.
Examples of right and wrong, using real slides.
Where the template lives and who maintains it.
Why a PDF is not enough
A brand book describes. A template enforces.
When the rules from the brand book are built into the slide masters of your PowerPoint template, nobody has to remember them. The logo is already in the right place, the colours are in the menu, the fonts are set. Anyone who makes a new slide is on-brand automatically.
The brand book then points to the template, and the template becomes the brand book in practice. How to build one is covered in how to structure your PowerPoint templates. How to keep it up across a large organisation is in all presentations on-brand across the entire organisation.
Compact or comprehensive?
For most organisations a brand book of ten to twenty pages is enough. Large brands with many applications sometimes have a hundred.
Choose what will be used. A compact brand book everyone knows does more than a thick document sitting in a folder. Add a one-page summary with the logos, colour codes and typefaces for anyone who needs something quickly.
How to keep your brand book alive
One owner. Someone who answers questions and makes changes.
One place. The brand book, the logos and the template live in one findable location, not in five email attachments.
A version number and date on the cover, so everyone knows whether they have the latest version.
Update it with every change, and remove the old files.
If you want your presentations to follow the brand book by themselves, Mr.Prezident can build a PowerPoint template on your brand.
Frequently asked questions
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What is included in a brand book?
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What is the difference between a visual identity and brand guidelines?
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How do I create a brand book?
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Should PowerPoint be part of a brand book?
