Are you clear on your brand standards?
Continuing with the series on brand standards and how they relate to your overall branding components, today we focus on your visual assets.
Brand standards allow your company to avoid an identity crisis. They help you maintain control of your brand assets. When you set and maintain standards, you provide an identifiable lens through which your company will be seen.
And what’s the simplest and most effective way to set and adhere to brand standards? It’s to let a framework, like the Brandview Framework be your guide. The framework is the foundation for your business brand.
To give you a roadmap, I’ve created a series of blog articles on brand standards and your framework. Today, we’re exploring your visuals.
The key to solid branding is a cohesive, visual story. This means your visuals balance and complement each other, they are in line with your company ethos, and they are recognizable. You need every element to stand out in your marketplace. Done correctly, your visual identity does just that.
Visual assets are your visual identity, the face of your business. They represent the overall visual representation of who you are, what you do, and who you serve.
The common components of a visual identity typically include:
Logo
Brand colors
Text Fonts
Images (on your website, in print, on social media updates, etc.)
Branded stationery and deliverables
Presentation materials (i.e. PowerPoint presentations)
So how do you use your visual assets as a branding standard for your company? You do this by using your visual identity selection as your standard for visual communication. Your visual identity selections are the aspects you have chosen for your visuals. These include characteristics like color scheme, font, artistic style and embellishments, layout, and templates. These are the core aspects of visuals that represent your brand. And these aspects must consistent and in sync with your overall brand story.
Why does this matter?
I wrote an article about how you can figure out if your business is suffering from an identity crisis. In the article, I broke down identity crisis and its consequences.
A brand identity crisis is when a business has branding assets that are not in sync with each other. For example, if you look at their website, and then their social media messages, it’s not immediately clear that they’re the same company.
Maybe the color schemes are different or the typography doesn’t match or their voice is slightly different across various plat
When you use your chosen brand visuals as the standard, it creates a brand identity that sets you apart from others and creates your visual story.
Every business has a brand story. Your brand story is how you are seen, recognized, and respected in the marketplace. It sets the tone for interactions with customers, clients, and stakeholders.
What is the standard you want to be known for in the marketplace?
How do you want to be seen? What visual imagery is the most accurate representation of what you do, who you help, and how you help them.
When you set clear standards, you set the barometer for measuring all your company brand assets, decisions, and even actions. It creates clear guidance for your internal teams, so they know how to perform accordingly. It also contributes to your reputation in the marketplace so that stakeholders, competitors, and potential customers and clients know what to expect from you. They can see how your business represents itself visually in a cohesive, well-structured story.