Brand Guidline Research
Research Brief: Brand Guideline documents.
When creating a brand a set of assets, such as logo's, Icons, colour palettes, typography, are produced along with those are ideas about best practice on using them, often an organisation mission statement, and a tone of voice for text and image to convey information in unified manner. Depending on the organisation these can be very thorough and in depth, others more vague and open to interpretation.
It is best practice to have this collated as a booklet, usually a PDF but they can also be printed hard copies.
Harry Ramsden
This was a brand refresh for 2018, After 90 years, Harry Ramsden's Iconic Fish and Chips had stuck quite closely to the original brand formulated back in 1928.
The comprehensive 61 page document covers clearly the mission statement, core values, the strapline and a tone of voice for writing.
Logo's, colour palette, including denominations and do's and don't for mixing the colours, an extensive range of typography and examples of use.
Photography and illustration styles.
The only thing the document doesn't cover at all is digital use, so web and social media instructions.
The document concludes with real world examples of the assets in use, on menus, posters, uniform and in store. Also a helpful little section on things to watch out for.
Having using these guidelines in the real world to produce menus, posters and dynamic in store screens I found them exceptionally easy to use, explaining clearly best practice and ideas on layouts.
Pay By Phone
Because there was very little on digital in Harry's I decided to focus on a brand that was much more digital focused in their approach
Other brand guidelines
I took a look at a variety of corporate brand guidelines, layout and presentation can vary widely as can the usability of the documents. See below for a selection of those I reviewed for this task.
