You’ll often hear designers, brand managers and marketeers bring up the issue of ensuring consistency with your brand. It may sound obvious but it’s surprising how easily different people working within a business can go off on tangents with their own ‘version of’ something and before you know it, you’ve got a bunch of brand assets that don’t work seamlessly together. Even the smallest of deviations can cause ripples.
Why is brand consistency important in your business?
Imagine this; a new potential customer sees an advert on Instagram for your product, they are attracted to the look of the advert and click on it to learn more. On entering your website they now encounter a different image, that’s ok, you use lots of images, but the image is also in a completely different photography style and the font used on the advert is also different, it’s a little disjointed. They decide they like the product anyway and want to consider buying it so sign up for your email newsletter but upon receiving this are met by a different palette of colours to those on your social post and website and now those fonts they first saw are huge with lots of spacing between them.
The customer becomes untrusting– does this brand know who they are? Are they a professional set up? Do they not care about consistency and therefore their products too will be varying levels of quality? Customers simply cannot buy into a brand in the way you need them too when met with erratic visual branding, it creates an unpredictability and uncertainty which as humans we are wired not to respond well to. Long term brand loyalty is particularly dependent on this, we will fail to fall in love with something that keeps changing.
See the example below, there’s nothing essentially ‘wrong’ with any of the touch points, but look how quickly in 3 steps things have changed and the brand is near unrecognisable.
When consistency broaches on boring and how to avoid it
There’s definitely the other end of the spectrum where the gatekeepers to a brand’s assets can be too focused on making everything look exactly the same. This can come from a lack of creative knowledge or understanding on how to manipulate your brand library to create freshness so that your communications don’t become stale.
When everything looks the same across all your channels – the same 2 colours, the same 1 font, the same background, only a few images, identical layouts for everything – ultimately the customer just scrolls on by because it doesn’t catch their attention, they think they’ve seen it before and therefore don’t need to invest any more time in it even though it could be a completely different piece of content.
Consistency in brand design is NOT putting on the same outfit everyday. It’s knowing your personal style and having a capsule wardrobe that allows you to build outfits that convey your sense of purpose.
The best way to avoid this pitfall is to ensure the designer that first develops your brand assets delivers you a versatile set of elements to work with then continue working with a good designer who understands following brand guidelines whilst delivering versatility.
You can see on the example below how by adding a secondary colour, two complimentary typefaces and two types of imagery (flatlay and lifestyle) the design becomes stronger and more expressive. They still look in the same family whilst being excitingly fresh.
What you need in your Brand Kit to keep it consistent AND versatile
1. Logos
Keep it strict – Don’t tweak your logo to fit a space or scenario. Don’t remove bits or change the styling.
Play it loose – When creating your primary logo you should also create a series of secondary, matching logos to work in different spaces such as a horizontal version if your primary is tall, a stacked one if it is long, and a brand mark for very small spaces.
2. Colours
Keep it strict – For branded items, your core, primary colours should never change. Make sure there are digital and print colour references available or use in on and offline areas.
Play it loose – Different shades or tones of your primary colours and/or a secondary palette will allow for creating highlights, sectioning and be useful for pulling out CTA’s. You may also have a different secondary palette for key seasonal campaigns.
3. Fonts
Keep it strict – Keep to a maximum of three complementary brand fonts and always use the same styling; spacing, weight and case.
Play it loose – The best way to play with fonts is to change scale, colour and composition, keep styling the same. For example, you’ve got a huge offer on, the text can be twice the size as normal in a super bright shade of your brand’s core colour, but don’t add letter spacing too.
4. Images
Keep it strict – One main photography style for your lifestyle, web and flatlay images, the same treatment, look and feel.
Play it loose – A library of complementary backgrounds, black and white versions, images that are close and far away from subjects, and incidentals will give you plenty of variety. Allow for UGC as long as the quality is reflective of your values.
Building your assets together
This is where designers are invaluable because they have the knowledge and experience to take your assets and turn them into something beautiful as well as functional. Without a knowledge of composition, balance and hierarchy, design easily looks uneven and unprofessional.
Above is a stripped back example of how a company’s brand guidelines could look.
Beyond the visual
Brand consistency expands beyond the visual to your verbal language and values too. Keeping all these elements consistent isn’t always easy, but it will deliver the new customer acquisition and loyalty you need to grow your business.
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Stock images shown are courtesy of unsplash.com