Branding Guidelines

For this project I have been asked to create a set of branding guidelines to go with my book cover, therefore I decided to research a little into what branding guidelines are and how they are used.  As the name suggests branding guidelines are essentially a set of rules to follow when designing for a company or business, they are important as they give your brand a visual identity and are how your brand or company is recognised by people this also means they must be consistent one of the main reasons branding guidelines exist. 

Branding guidelines will consist of the brand feel, typography, colours, imagery as well as potentially layout so there is a lot of information for the designer to work with. 

The guidelines come with ways to use a brands image and includes special exceptions on when you can change a set guideline for example when you should change the colour of a font as well as clears "don'ts" which show what you cannot do or change with the elements you have for example where a logo is positioned or the background it is on. 

Branding guidelines usually include the following  - 

The Brand Feel - The guidelines will explain the feel a brand wants to give and how they should come across to the consumers or the public it also lets the designer learn a bit about the company or brand before designing for them which would be helpful, because you would then know what kind of feel your work should give off and what it should suggest about the brand.

Typography - The guidelines will show the fonts that are used by the brand and how they should be displayed in particular the primary font used for the brand. As well as this the guidelines will also include the font sizes, kerning, leading and possibly other info depending on how detailed the guidelines are. They will also feature secondary fonts for sub-headings or other text on a design.

Colours - The guidelines will show the primary and secondary colours used by the brand and give there pantone values (if available) there CMYK values, RGB values as well as there hexadecimal value.Most branding guidelines will also give clear do's and don'ts on where to uses the colours and what they should and shouldn't go with. 

Imagery - The guidelines will suggest the type of imagery you should be using when designing for them, for example telling you what to avoid and what the images should be featuring.