Guide The Design For Your Brand
Your brand, at its inception, is analogous to a child with limitless potential. Everything from how you raise it, to the values you instill in it, will influence the identity it takes on. To ensure success, consistency is pertinent.
And how do you maintain consistency? Through concrete style guides.
A guide provides a systematic way to ensure the principles being set, are followed. Imagine you have five designers working on the brand, all of them will have their approach to representing the brand. This is where a definitive guide will keep your brand designs from getting Frankenstein-ed.
The guide will keep your team consistent in creating the perfect design that matches the vision of your brand. It increases collaboration in your team and sets guidelines that can be inculcated to create a design unique to your brand. There would be no back and forth in collecting opinions on colors and typefaces as the guide relays what should be used and what should be avoided.
However, before creating a guide, there should be absolute clarity on the fundamental rules of design, for they affect almost every aspect of the guide.
- Emphasis on the focal point of design in order of importance.
- Balance in elements for the perfect alignment.
- Contrast to make the design pop.
- Some Repetition to unify and strengthen the design.
- Proportion for a symmetrical, balanced look.
- Movement for creating a narrative and proper communication of the message.
- Making good use of the white space for a sophisticated look.
Once these rules are clearly followed by you and your team, it would be much easier to create and adhere to design guidelines.
All-in-all, the perfect way to ensure that your brand stays consistent and the design conveys the brand identity, is through a definitive style guide.
The How Of The Guide
Once you’ve decided on a particular flow, it’s important that your team has clarity on your vision. A comprehensive design guide comes in handy here.
There are aspects that a design guide must cover, such as -
Style
Start with something simple. Lay down the colors you want to use in the brand. Putting some restrictions on their usage will make the guide more definitive. For example, Yellow should be the “add-to-cart” button, blue can only be used in “explore options”, The text colors should be grey, avoid pink at all costs, etc. It is also important to avoid using too many colors. The brand identity depends a lot on the colors you use in the designs. You don’t want that identity to get jumbled.
Do not forget to include the exact hex codes of the color you decide to use in your design guide.
Layout
You’re done picking out your colors, now it’s time to fix a layout and decide what goes where. The margin, padding, and position of each component in a page need to be determined and laid out in the design guide.
The structure of the page needs to be clear and consistent as well. Make sure each page has the same sized margins and containers. From the space between texts to the size of each section, the layout needs to be extremely clear so that the team of designers can follow it without any confusion whatsoever.
Texts And Typefaces
You need to figure out everything about texts while creating a design guide and convey your expectations as clearly as possible. It includes text size, text style, typeface, and anything remotely related to texts.
It is important to be consistent with your typography in order to look professional. You might have different options to use for different aspects or components in the design, and it’s important to dictate what typeface goes where in the design and for what purpose.
UI Components
The components on a user interface include buttons, icons, CTC, etc. You need to lay out how each component reacts to each action. What color the buttons are when clicked, how an icon reacts when the cursor hovers over it, and so on.
When you include UI elements in your design guide, it helps the developers have a clearer idea of your vision and the UI designers have a reference to make composite designs that match your vision.
The Logo
Create specific instructions on how you want the brand logo to look. The iconography, the text, the size, and the color instructions need to be as specific as possible.
Create a guide on where you want the logo to be placed as well and how many times you want to showcase it on the layout.
It’s important to showcase how not to use the logo. Designers are creative and can have their own vision of what looks good on a page. Be specific on the layout and create some instances where you absolutely do not want the logo to be placed.
Benefits Of The Guide
It can take a lot of effort to create a comprehensive design guide, however, the benefits definitely outweigh every effort you put into it.
It will get your team together and provide a collaborative environment, keeping the design consistent. It also reduces the time your team spends on designing. They won’t be asking for opinions on components and aspects anymore as they will have a reference to follow.
Who else does the guide help? Developers!
The design guide helps developers with their coding. When they write the code, they often compile all of the elements’ styles into a single file and then assign that style to different components. This reduces redundant codes, making the process much more effective.
And let’s not forget about the brand itself.
The consistency the guide will provide will create an image of the brand in the minds of its audience, making it more recognizable. The marketing initiatives for your brand will also be more streamlined with a comprehensible design guide. There will be no ambiguity in what colors or fonts to use on billboards, posters, or social media posts.
The guide will help distinguish the brand from its competitors and makes sure the design is cohesive. A cohesive and consistent design later helps in creating brand awareness. Over time, the awareness will give way to building trust in your audience.
To sum up
The design guide will set comprehensible design standards and make your vision clear for your team. The reference will make the lives much easier of everyone involved in the project. The guide covers almost everything that will appear on the screen, Be it colors, texts, layout, icons, or buttons, every expectation is laid out and easy to access for guaranteed consistency from the designers.
You should also keep updating your guideline as your brand grows and changes. It keeps everyone in the loop and gives way to a collaborative environment that benefits everyone.
The guide will help create n image in the minds of your audience and make it more recognizable for everyone who associates with it. You create a win-win situation for everyone with your design guidelines.
