Identity Style Guides—Ensuring Consistency
Style guides propose standards for design and brand representation for a specific publication or organisation. Some focus on graphic design, covering topics such as typography, colour specifications, use of logos, and can extend to online usage of creative assets.
Style guides focus on a publication's visual and technical aspects, prose style, best usage, grammar, punctuation, spelling, and fairness.
A style guide can range in size from 1-2 pages to 50, depending on the range and complexity of an organisation's communications/publishing activities.
The benefits of adopting an Identity style guide are to ensure that brand assets are deployed consistently—this is the absolute essential element of branding. Identity style guides are derived from the branding process.
Examples of our Identity Style Guides are available on request.
Branding Programmes, Identity Style Guides
Branding is essential to any business, if you have not considered branding extensively you are already at least three steps behind your competitors.
The branding "concept" is rather misunderstood, it is certainly not confined to issues such as logos, taglines, and mission/vision/values statements. These are representations of a brand, and to develop them properly, an organisation needs to run through a classical branding programme. If such a programme is implemented, organisations can develop their brand promise from where brand definitions and aspects of the brand identity can be derived.
The benefits of adopting a branding programme are:
- Branding is the starting point for giving the very definition of your organisation, essentially what it stands for and what your customers believe your stand for.
- With a brand promise in hand, an organisation can proceed with confidence to effectively market, advertise and conduct public relations exercises safe in the knowledge that these programmes are all backed up by the output of the branding programme.
- Branding builds trust, consistent messaging carefully designed to show the unique qualities of your organisation build value. Trust is an essential element in securing business, if your clients trust you, there are more likely to go in your direction.
- Branding builds value (equity) over time, consistent application of your brand promise builds equity that will assist in initiating and maintaining customer relationships, regardless of economic climates.
We specialise in branding in education and non-profit organisations. We understand the challenges facing schools, colleges and universities in key markets in South East Asia, particularly those in Thailand and Singapore.