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Brand handbook, brand guide, or design system, whatever you call it, it's a must for companies investing in branding. But how do you make these resources easy to use? If you're still relying on PDF files or a Dropbox link filled with scattered files, it's time to rethink your approach.
When you need the latest approved logo, you just contact your agency, right? Why should we spend more time and money on a brand guide? We already have a visual identity.
But what happens when the company grows? You increase the number of employees in marketing, design, and development departments. How do you manage to build a consistent brand in such a scenario?
A digital brand guide centralizes brand resources, guidelines, and templates into a single, accessible hub. Unlike static PDF guides and files on Dropbox, a digital brand guide ensures that everyone, both internal and external collaborators, stays up-to-date and consistent across all channels.
Simply put, it saves you time, money, and provides consistent branding.
Example of the front page to a brand guide
As much as a digital brand guide helps designers and developers, it helps the marketing department just as much, if set up correctly. For instance, for someone who works a lot with influencers and social media, you can create a separate section where you can easily find and download all information in terms of language and tone, messaging, videos, images, and other resources. Here, you can create guidelines on what can be conveyed, how it should be conveyed, and visually show how different resources can and cannot be used.
How many emails have you sent back and forth both internally and to external collaborators about one thing or another not following the brand guidelines? And how many times has something been changed only to be forgotten because something more important came up? This is where a digital brand guide comes into play and helps all departments in the company to be consistent by making everything available through a website. Available online, whenever and to whoever you want.
Let's say you hire a new advertising and design agency to launch some new campaigns. If all communication about the brand is done manually, via email, it will cost you many unnecessary hours. This is where the digital brand guide comes in and takes over almost all communication. All you need to do is provide those who need access with a URL and possibly a password.
Example of a page describing colours and how to use them
Example of a simple image collection
This is a question that has multiple answers, and what determines the best solution depends on your needs. If you need a simple brand guide that only describes your visual identity, along with some text and images, there are services that offer cost-effective solutions for this. However, if you need a more advanced system that also can include the use of a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system, which allows you to store, organize, manage, and share digital files and resources, it quickly becomes a more advanced setup and greater costs.
There is a sea of different solutions out there and to choose one that fits both now and can be scaled up in the future, it can be both time- and cost-effective to consult someone who has experience and knowledge on how this is done most effectively for your needs.
In other words, there are many good reasons to develop a digital brand guide. By using a digital system, you can start small and gradually expand with more content as needed. This allows you to maximize the value of your investments in your branding. If you are interested in learning more about how a digital brand guide can be beneficial for you, please contact Marcus Strömberg, and we will look closer at how we can help you.
