How Acumbamail created its brand book and what you can learn from it
A brand logo is a fundamental pillar for any company, but what’s the point of spending all the efforts and resources for the perfect logo if we can’t assure its later correct use in each communication we make? At Acumbamail we are aware of this issue so we did not just invest in a logo redesign, but in a new brand book too.
The brand book of a company is one of the most important documents when it comes to the image that the business wants to project.
For any company that wants to send a coherent, consistent and cohesive message to its public, there must be some minimal rules to follow that don’t leave any room for improvising when the brand needs to be applied in different scenarios.
It doesn’t really matter the size of a company, any business can benefit from having a brand book. It is a powerful tool that can also help teamwork.
In this article, we will give you detailed information on what a brand book is and we’ll talk about all the sections that it may need to have (brand, logo, colors, typography…) using as reference the work we did in Acumbamail, which you can download here.
Let us know what you think about it!
What’s a brand book?
A brand book is a document where you can find all the guidelines to follow in order to achieve brand consistency. This means explaining how all graphic elements that define the brand must be used (logo, color, typography…).
In this way, whoever is using the image or the assets of a brand, does it correctly, without manipulating, distorting or warping the meaning that the owner gave it in its creation and wanted to be delivered to the audience.
Why is it important?
A corporation without a brand book exposes itself to a wrong communication of the brand every time it has to be applied, regardless of whether the person who conducts it belongs to the company or not. In this way, we risk a fragmented and unprofessional transmission of our image to potential clients.
So, a brand book is an essential tool to ensure homogeneous communication throughout the company, but what other reasons are there to have one?
On one hand, it will save us money, time and resources. Now, think that every time you need a graphic design for your company (either made by one of your own employees or a freelance) you have to explain to the person in charge of it, every specification that has to be met to ensure communication consistency, or even worse, constantly adjust and rework the asset to achieve the desired result (if you’re a graphic designer you probably can relate to this).
Thanks to the brand book, designers will have all the information they need to start working, making everyone’s job easier and avoiding wasting time on either side. Furthermore, in case you have several designers working on the same project, all of them will have the same information and guidelines from the beginning, and this will help to prevent inconsistencies, even when several professionals are involved.
On the other hand, having this consistency will indeed improve your corporate image, which is the perception consumers have about your company (trust me you don’t want to mess that up) — NOT the visuals and ✨aesthetics✨ of the brand, as many people think (but that’s a topic for another day).
What should a brand book include?
Big companies have reaaaaally extensive brand books. Think about Coca-Cola: in how many different situations have you seen the brand? All of these have to be previously considered, thought about and designed, and yeah, you guessed it, most of the solutions for these situations are going to be detailed in the brand book.
Every brand book has to have its own sections, originating from the own singularity of the brand. That’s why small companies should not take as reference bigger ones, because their needs are not the same (yet 😉).
So, the recommendation here is to start from the key elements of your brand, what makes it unique, and from that point make the necessary additions.
A brand book is a living document, that will be adapting to the new paradigm changes of the company, it is never really finished because we live in a changing world. That is why you don’t have to worry about your brand book being too plain at first, as you keep on growing and hitting new milestones through your corporate journey your brand book will grow alongside it. And we all know that bigger is not better, right?
Basic and advisable sections
Next, we will talk about the basic sections a brand book “should” have. As we said earlier, it may be that some of these sections might not be needed in your brand book, and, in the same way, there may be some others that are essential for your case that are missing. So, don’t feel obligated to hit all the points of the following list if you don’t see the need, and please add any other section that you think is a must in your company.
Of course, it would always be helpful to take a look at the brand book of some significant companies of your sector, to get a sense of at what point your brand is from a visual point of view and which may be the next steps and developments.
The brand
Most brand books start with an introduction to the brand, its values, philosophy, tone of voice, or any other aspect that may be considered relevant. Here are some questions that may help you to start writing all of these:
- Who are you?
- What is your history?
- What do you do/sell?
- What makes you special?
- What do you contribute to society?
- …
The logo
The logo is the most crucial part of the visual identity of your business. It is what will define the rest of the applications of the brand. Because of this, we will talk about different topics related to the logo.
But before, it won’t hurt to talk about some lexical differences, as even though we mostly use the word “logo” to refer to any graphic sign representing a business, product, service, etc., this is not quite right.
Depending on the elements of the “logo” and how they interact with each other we can talk about:
Wordmarks/Logotypes: these are only formed by typography.
- Logo symbol/Brand marks/Pictorial marks: this is the symbolic part of the graphic representation, the sign or icon that is used to embody the brand. This makes the brand recognizable at first sight.
- Combination marks: in these, we can find two differentiated parts, an image and a single or some words, a symbol with a wordmark. Sometimes these parts can work independently to better suit various contexts. These types of brand designs are popular because of their versatility. Acumbamail is a combination mark.
- Emblems: This is also a combination of text and image, but in this case, they rarely are split, and they are completely integrated with one another.
It is important to know what kind of graphic representation your company has, so you can specify it in the brand book, and explain the intention behind your “logotype” (we will use the word logotype/logo as a general term, so it makes it easier to explain the rest of the concepts).
As we were saying, the logotype is a fundamental pillar in the brand book, that will indeed affect the rest of your visual identity in a transcendental way. So, apart from adding a brief explanation about it and what it represents, it’s recommendable to add other aspects, such as the following.
Logo grid
This subsection is for showing the grid used for the creation of the logo, and to detail its proportions and measures. This is for the logo to always maintain the same dimensions, even when it is enlarged or reduced in size.
As you can see, the Acumbamail logo was built using the Golden ratio to determine its proportions, the corner radius of the envelope and the size of the star.
Positive and negative versions, chromatic variations and backgrounds
Every logo has to have a negative version, in white color (being the positive version the one with the original color). In most cases, it is pretty easy to do the negative version, but in many others it’s not. If the logo has complex shapes, it gets quite tricky, and the result can be a little bit disturbing if done incorrectly. But having this version is important to ensure that when the usage of dark background is mandatory the logo will still be legible. It is also essential to specify which colors can be used in the logo (if any variation on this exists) and how these color variations have to be used regarding the background.
Logo misuses
This section is a compilation of all the transformations you MUST NOT do to the logo, like deformations, using wrong colors, rotations, inclinations, stretching, etc… The incorrect uses of your logo will depend specifically on your logo.
Reduction test
This test is about how small your logo can get without compromising its legibility, both online and in print.
Logo safe area
The “safe area” of a logo tries to establish the minimum distance between the logo and other elements, to guarantee its correct perception and the integrity of the brand in visual communications. You can use elements of the logo itself to establish this distance or white space (the height of the typography for example).
Logo responsiveness
It is becoming more and more usual to have a mobile responsive version of the logo, so we can assure that even on the smallest screens the logo will be easily recognizable. This is totally optional but very recommendable, especially if your activity will be mostly in the online world.
Corporate typography
In the brand book, it will be necessary to specify all the corporate typographies that are used, both in the logo and outside it. The general rule is to have a primary typography and a secondary one, but there may be only one typography or even three different ones.
In each case, the typography is shown with all the glyphs that are part of it, from “A” to “Z” (lower and upper case), all the numbers from 0 to 9, all the different signs, all the weight variations available in each specimen (thin, extralight, light, regular, book, bold, extrabold, black, italic, condensed, expanded, etc.), and of course, where and how to use every font.
It is also very useful to choose a web-safe typography option, which is the most similar option possible to the principal typography, for those cases in which, because of web accessibility, you can not use the corporate font. By having this option we avoid any other typography being chosen, which can completely disrupt our brand consistency.
Helvetica Neue is Acumbamail’s web safe typography option
Lastly, you can add some examples of how typography should be used. In this way, you will give a sense of proportions between titles and body copy or show the different variations in use.
Color palette
In this case, we not only have to identify and describe the colors that are in our logo but also all those colors that are going to be present in the brand in any other way.
If you have an extended color palette (like Acumbamail’s) it is important to explain what use each color has, so they are never used incorrectly.
It would be also useful to establish a color hierarchy, to further clarify which colors must be predominant and have to be prioritized over the rest.
Of course, all colors must have all the information necessary to guarantee they are always the same exact color every time they are used.
The recommended information to include is:
RGB
It is based on the additive color mixing system, with which it is possible to represent a color by mixing the three primary light colors: Red, Green and Blue. This color mode applies only to devices employing light, such as computers or mobile phones. It should never be used for printing.
CMYK
The CMYK color model is based on the subtractive color model, which mixes the following colors in order to obtain the rest: C = Cyan, M = Magenta, Y = Yellow y K = Key (Black). This color mode is the one that is used for printing.
HEX / Hexadecimal
It is an RGB mode representation by an alphanumeric number formed by 6 figures, that represent the color spectrum available for web/app design.
Pantone
The Pantone Matching System (PMS) is the color standardization system that identifies each color with a code; it is also known as solid colors.
This catalog is the most used in the world and has more than a thousand different colors. As it is a standardized system, it guarantees that the chosen color will always be printed in the exact same tone, no matter what printer or format is used. So, the PMS is handy when printing in many different mediums (stationery, packaging, product, serigraphy, vinyl, stands, textiles…).
For instance, in Acumbamail’s case, all our activity is mainly carried out in the online context, so there is no need to specify a Pantone equivalent for each color, as it won’t be used. This is what we refer to when we talk about every situation being one-of-a-kind.
Don’t feel forced to fit any standard if it doesn’t make any sense to you.
Icons and symbols
If your company has a custom icon system expressly designed for you it is necessary to include this in the brand book, as with any other system of signs you may use.
If new icons may be added to the collection, it would be convenient to explain how to create them, so there are some guidelines to ensure consistency.
Here you can see the grid system and some specifications used to create Acumbamail’s icons.
Photographs, illustrations, patterns…
If your communication will be using photography or illustration resources it is important to specify very well which characteristics they have to fulfill, in order to be used.
Define which criteria to follow for choosing these resources. You can be as specific as you wish, and it would be good to add some examples, so people can have a visual reference, you know “A picture is worth a thousand words” (or so it is said).
If your illustration style is very defined, and each illustration is made from scratch for every occasion, then the best you can do is to describe how they should look, listing all the specifications that must be followed to reproduce your brand style faithfully.
For Acumbamail’s illustrations, they always have to be done in black and white with a color accent. All shapes must have white fill and a black stroke. In some cases, you can use black or colored filled shapes without any stroke. But if there is any stroke, it must always be black, around 9 pt of weight, uniform, with rounded corners and unions and centered aligned. Illustrations needn’t have any background of any type. Vector format is recommended. The style of the illustrations is minimalist, with only the elements needed to convey the main idea.
You can list in this section any other graphic elements that have a decorative intention, like patterns or watermarks.
Others
Now we will talk about some extra sections that may be useful for your brand. Remember, as we already mentioned, each brand is unique and has particular necessities, so if you don’t find them handy, feel free to discard them.
Logo examples
If your brand is going to do a lot of stationery (envelopes, letter paper, business cards, folders…) it is necessary that all of it is designed and shown by mockups and examples.
The same applies to merchandising (t-shirts, cups, caps, pens, pins, bags… the options are endless and can be adapted to every sector), packaging, uniforms, company vehicles, product design, etc.
Before doing this the best thing to do is to think beforehand about all the places your logo may need to be, in this way we can anticipate possible errors that can affect our brand communication in a wrong manner.
Audiovisual and digital uses
The same happens for the digital channels and all the audiovisual content that we may produce. For instance, it is necessary to decide how the brand avatar should look on every social media, our logo animation, lower thirds or any other decorative animated element…
Finally, don’t forget to add a nice cover and an index where all the sections are listed and layed out so it makes the brand book easier to navigate and read. You should also add your contact info at the end of the document, inviting all your readers to contact your design department in case of doubt. It is also helpful to add the last date of actualization, and the upcoming sections that will be addressed in the next versions (if you have that planned).
Wrap up
We can say that having a brand book in your company will save you time, costs and resources, regardless of how basic or extended it is.
It is a useful tool especially if you will be working with outsourced collaborators (freelancers, agencies…). They will surely appreciate having a document like this in their hands, in this way they could quickly understand how the brand works on a visual level.
If you want to give it a look, you can download Acumbamail’s brand book here.
These were the topics we decided to put inside our brand book but we would like to hear from you about your experience in designing a brand book. What other sections would you have added or what would you have avoided and why?
