Pivale used to be known as Real Life Digital, and before that Real Life Design. This article contains references to Real Life Digital or Real Life Design which are names we traded as before becoming Pivale. You can read more about our rebrand here.
Your brand is the face of your business, and whether you spent millions on brand development or knocked up a logo in Microsoft Word at 3 o'clock in the morning you need to be thinking about what your brand says about your company.
People often underestimate the importance of brand consistency, but think of it like this: if potential clients are seeing different logos, typography, colours, images etc. on your signwriting, website, social media accounts, printed materials and so on then how are you ever going to stick in their mind? How will they know that they can trust to come to you when they require your products or services? Will they feel confident that they've come to the right place? Will they even remember your company's name? Probably not.
So how can you resolve the dilemma of retaining consistency when you use "John's Mobile Signwriting" for creating your vehicle advertising, "Valerie's Print Shop" for printing your business cards, "Rasheed's Creative" for producing your brochures and "Dominique's Digital" for building your website? They're probably not talking to each other. In fact Rasheed used to work for Valerie and they had a big falling out! And don't get us started on how Valerie and Dominique seem to speak different languages when it comes to design. The answer to resolving this consistency conundrum is simple. Have you ever heard of the saying "just making sure we're all singing from the same hymn sheet"? That's your branding document. Your branding document is your company's visual hymn sheet, and every time you hand it over to somebody who is doing creative or visual work for you, they will know and understand what they can or can't do with your brand. No inconsistent, individual interpretations that don't join up. And no translations necessary either.
A branding document or brand guideline pack will:
Depending on the scale of your brand and the size of your company your branding document could vary wildly! I've seen branding documents that are literally hundreds of pages long and others that are only a few pages long. Typically, though, there are some things that should generally be communicated.
A branding document should almost always contain information on:
A branding document can also contain other branding considerations such as:
A branding document can be as concise or as detailed as you require it to be. One thing your branding document should ensure is that your brand identity is always maintained whilst giving designers the flexibility to be able to create the best designs for you.
If you'd like to take a look at our branding document you can do so over on our brand resources page, along with downloads for our logos, fonts and other resources.
If you need a branding document you can get in touch with us.
We look forward to hearing from you.
A corporate rebrand can be risky or a big opportunity. Choosing a partner who understands the process is a key step in ensuring success for your web brand.
