The 3 Non-negotiable Elements of Visual Branding
The range of Visual Branding possibilities is infinite, so it’s next to impossible to say, “Do this, don’t do that.”
Still, there are three absolutely required elements.
Effective Communication
Your visual branding must help your company communicate with the world. If your swirly-font logo is hard to understand, if your color scheme disappears in the sunlight, or if your right-aligned text slows down your reader, it’s bad design.
Your visual branding also needs to communicate about your company in a way that makes sense.
This goes back to the “culture, values, and style” idea. If your daring internet startup looks like a conservative law office, you have bad branding.
Everything communicates something. Be sure your branding communicates what you want it to.
Consistency
The same font, the same colors, the same angles, the same, the same, the same. It needs to look the same online, offline, in print, in person, and in your office.
I don’t mean you have to be boring. I mean that if your business card and your letterhead both have a green stripe, they’re the same exact shade of green. I’m not saying you can’t use different fonts, I’m saying that the body text on your letterhead ought to be the same as the body text in your catalog. You want to use something different for titles? Great. Make sure all the titles get changed, not just some of them.
Consistency is one of those tiny, subconscious signals that tells people whether you’re a legitimate business, or some basement chop-shop.
Depending on the nature of your business, it might be worthwhile to put together an In-house Style Guide. This is basically a (well-designed, consistently branded) catalog of how things in your company are supposed to look: fonts, colors, logos, proportions, margins, watermarks, paper grades, finishes. If your company exists solely online, this might be nothing more than a text file listing fonts and HTML color hex-codes (a streamlined, human readable version of a CSS file). If you have a lot of client interaction and produce a great deal of printed collateral, you may need a physical book.
Quality Control
Words and pictures accidentally overlapping. Trifold brochures with uneven folding. Poorly cut business cards. Websites that break in IE6. Crooked labels. The last line of text
s t r et c h ed o ut for no reason.
It makes you look cheap. It makes you look crappy.
Do you want to hire a company that cannot produce quality?
I’m flabbergasted by the number of people and firms that think this stuff doesn’t matter.
It matters. Don’t suck.
Why would you want to suck?
