In this weeks lecture I learned about brand guidelines and colour. This was my first time learning about brand guidelines, and how they enable businesses to stay consistent across all different platforms and touchpoints. Brand guidelines contain all of a brands completed design work, and are used as a point of reference to ensure consistency. Without brand guidelines, a brand may have inconsistent use of typefaces and colours, which makes them appear un-professional, and hurts brand identity.
To familiarise myself with the process of creating brand guidelines, I chose a local business and created one for them. This was a bit of a challenge as this business is relatively new and at times not 100% consistent in their brand identity.
I started off by looking at the brands social media presence and their website. This helped me determine what their brand identity and personality was.
I had to use an online typeface identifier tool to accurately identify what typefaces Pure Bird uses in their branding I found that their wordmark was in the Steelfish Rounded extra bold font with a distressed, worn effect applied to the text.
I found this exercise to be very useful, as it has helped me become more familiar with the process of how to create a brand guidelines document; and going through this with an already well established brand made for a fun challenge. This process has also shown me how necessary a brand guideline document is for a new business. During my research for this Pure Bird brand document I found that the business at times appears to not have an established set of rules for their visual identity. For example, some of their social media posts may include a not regularly used typeface, or their brand colours may be a little bit off. These problems could be combatted by having a set of brand guidelines for designer to reference.