The brand book that won’t steal the whole budget

Alas, not all brand books are white-handed. We’re going to show you the difference between a logo book and a guideline, as well as between a guideline and a brand book. How to find out what from this is helpful for your brand and how not to buy a pig in a poke for lots of money.

Branding services cost completely different on the market: ‘brand book development’ varies from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars in agencies and studios. How to understand that you are buying a useful and sufficient document of your brand, which will be applicable in practice, and won’t be forgotten on the shelf?

In this article we’ll figure out how to evaluate brand design work correctly, state what you need and, it’s important, don’t overpay.

Don’t have time to read the full article? Here are the answers to your questions:

How not to overpay for brand design 

There are three types of documentation for a brand: a logo book, a guideline and a brand book. Of course, there’re many more of them thanks to marketers’ prayers and fantasies. On the Internet you’ll find: a miniguide, a brand bible, corporate identity documentation, a cutguide, a brand standards passport… 😑

It’s important to understand that branding police don’t exist. There’s no single standard on the market for how exactly each of these documents should look. Because of this, there are many interpretations, and someone sells only brand books, because it sounds more expensive, someone measures the number of pages. Three formats are considered the most common and accepted in the marketing community: a logo book, a guideline and a brand book. We recommend dwelling on them.

In order not to fool yourself with marketing terms and not count sheets, there are two main rules for choosing a brand documentation format:

  1. the number of pages doesn’t matter,
  2. choose the format that suits your business needs.

Principle 1. Number of pages ≠ benefit

There is a common statement that the more pages in a document, the more similar it is to a brand book, the less similar it is to a logo book.There is a common statement that the more pages in a document, the closer it is to a brand book, the less it is to a logo book.

Undoubtedly, there is more information in a brand book, and consequently, its volume is thicker. But sometimes there is manipulation of the form. This is used by unscrupulous freelancers, and sometimes by companies: they add unnecessary slides, spread a paragraph of information over 5 pages with title pages, half-titles and other curtsies. As a result, a logo book turns into a brand book — but, alas, only in monetary terms. Regarding the content, this is still the same logo book. 

The good news is that it’s not necessary to guess what is hidden under the terms of the next implementer. There is a golden rule:

Be affected not by the number of pages or the title, but by the accuracy and the task that you want to solve with its help.

Principle 2. Task first → form later

What is important is not how thick the result is in the file, but its practical applicability. Rely on plans for the next 1-2 years and don’t make the task wider than it is: if you have just started, you don’t need to make a brand book for the business of the future from the Fortune 500 list.

Task

Form

For whom

To launch fast and look integrally on all platforms: in social networks, listings and a mobile app.

Logo book

For startups and brands that haven’t got a well-formed value system and brand history yet

To update the visual, taking into account the values of the brand; streamline knowledge about the brand, form the desired image with the audience and apply brand elements systematically.

Guideline

For a brand that has a history

To synchronize distributed offices and divisions of different cities and countries; broadcast common values within the company and in communication with customers; maintain a unified corporate identity at all points of contact between the consumer and the brand.

Brand book

For companies with wide geography

To launch fast and look integrally on all platforms: in social networks, listings and a mobile app → logo book → for startups and brands that haven’t got a well-formed value system and brand history yet.

To update the visual, taking into account the values of the brand; streamline knowledge about the brand, form the desired image with the audience and apply brand elements systematically → guideline → for a brand that has a history.

To synchronize distributed offices and divisions of different cities and countries; broadcast common values within the company and in communication with customers; maintain a unified corporate identity at all points of contact between the consumer and the brand → brand book → for companies with wide geography.

Let’s have a look at the reason why startups, even with big ambitions, need a logo book more often. The stages of startup development are too short: design, MVP, verification with users, refinement, scaling — everything changes at each stage. The hypothesis didn’t work → reformatted; worked → scaled the idea. And so on until the project becomes stable and predictable.

This doesn’t mean that a startup should live without an identity until the stage of stability. It just needs to be flexible, not run many years ahead and not be based on mere ambitions. This is unlikely to bring anything apart from losing money.

It makes sense to do a guideline when the business has been working stably for at least a year, there is a reliable audience and income.

How to understand what you need: a logo book, a guideline or a brand book

To make it easier to understand, keep a flowchart that will help you decide on the choice of document depending on your goal.

What’s inside the standards passport

So, the task is clear, the form — too. Now you can deal with the terms. As we’ve already said, there is no conditional All-Union State Standard on the market, so the content of the standards passport may differ from studio to studio.

Here’s how it works in our case.

Logo book

Guideline

Brand book

Brand platform

Position description: mission, audience, values, vision, character and style, product

Visual identity

Logo

Micro version and additional versions

Icon

Security field logo

Invalid Logo Uses

Corporate font

+/–

Color palette

+/–

Grid, layout rules or graphic modules

Illustrative style and photo style, patterns

Corporate identity users

Media samples and rules for their use. Reference layouts and source codes for designers and manufacturers. Business documentation, ATL, BTL, digital branding, branding of physical spaces, website, applications, clothes, etc.

Verbal identity

Principles of verbal identity (naming, slogan, descriptor, tone of communication)

Sensory identity (if applicable to the brand)

Principles of sensory identity. Recommendations on materials, smells, sounds and everything that concerns senses.

Auditory identity (if applicable to the brand)

Principles of auditory identity. Samples and recommendations: jingles, interface audio, etc.

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