Keeping your finely-tuned brand looking and sounding consistent with an ever-changing mix of suppliers, internal teams and individual stakeholders can be a complicated and time-consuming task. We've been there. Luckily, there are more and more digital tools available to make life easier.
But which is right for you? Selecting the right brand guidelines approach is a key step in successfully communicating your brand, both internally and externally. Let's take a look at some of the best strategies and tools available today.
Above: NASA brand guidelines. How we did it in the old days.
Many companies invest in online brand guidelines tools due to a broad spectrum of users, from marketing teams who interact with the brand frequently, to those in HR who might only need the logo on occasion. Online brand guidelines are instantly updatable, can be more user-friendly than a "traditional" PDF, are easily communicated by circulating a link, and are great for users who just need some basic information. Their disadvantages include potential complexity when scanning for specific information on a webpage, and there are typically recurring monthly costs.
There are a few different options for developing online brand guidelines. For most control and scalability, a custom microsite is often preferred by larger organizations. A custom site can be nested within the corporate domain, gives the most flexibility in design of the brand guidelines and can support brand evolution indefinitely (if designed well). It certainly requires higher upfront investment, but potentially leads to lower ongoing maintenance costs.
Alternately, a team might opt for an off-the-shelf solution, which will typically allow for semi-customization with colors and typeface, but locks the team into using a predetermined layout and architecture that may be limiting. Leading examples of off-the-shelf solutions include Frontify, BrandFolder, and Lingo.
Above: Frontify. Good stuff, if you want a packaged solution.
Frontify is currently top end of the market in off-the-shelf online brand guidelines solutions. They offer the most flexible premade online guidelines, with over 40 premade content modules to select from, some of which are only available for the Enterprise tier plans. Frontify’s brand guidelines can integrate with an optional digital asset manager and a limited dynamic template tool.
BrandFolder’s brand guidelines offering, BrandGuide, is designed to supplement their larger digital asset management (DAM) solution. BrandFolder has the most robust dynamic template solution, which can support both print and digital workflows.
Corebook is a new offering in the space. Its ability to host background images and animations provides for visually richer brand guidelines. It also has a helpful micro-navigation feature that allows linking to specific areas of each page.
Lastly, Lingo has a brand guidelines tool called Brand Style Guide which is also designed to work with their own digital asset management solution. Lingo’s tool features analytics and Figma integration, and a limited set of content blocks but enough to cover all the necessities.
Of course, an online brand guidelines approach is not ideal for all purposes and end-user needs. They're not practical for communicating dense amounts of information, such as extended specifications needed by some production teams. They might also not be the preferred format for people who need to reference the same information frequently, such as color formulas. With external vendors it may not be possible or desirable to share certain brand information through creating new logins to your brand center. Lastly, you might have specialized brand information that isn’t for such a broad audience that it warrants creating a whole new section of online brand guidelines, but for which you still need documentation. These are all use cases for PDF guidelines.
Today, PDF guidelines are sometimes regarded as anachronistic, but often remain a necessity as a backup, and there are clear advantages to including a PDF option for technical organizations with strict security or extended specifications.
The first and most obvious advantage for any manager on a budget is the zero monthly hosting or maintenance cost. The second is the ability for team members, advertising creatives and implementation partners to take them anywhere, regardless of whether a data connection is available. A third advantage, becoming more salient in this age of heightened data security, is the ability to deliver guidelines to vendors outside a company firewall when an external microsite is not allowed. For example, video production partners or social media agencies. For production teams that deal with extended specifications, a PDF version may be needed to keep track and find things rapidly, regardless.
The clearest disadvantage, one that can affect fast-evolving organizations in particular, is that physical PDF guidelines cannot be automatically updated to the latest version the way a microsite can when brand specs evolve. Older versions of the guidelines may still be floating around that need to be controlled for, so this is something to plan for.
Specialized guidelines are a subset of brand guidelines focused on a specific topic for a specific audience, such as trademark guidelines or signage. These are usually delivered in PDF format because they're not of general enough interest for them to warrant being posted online.
Extended brand guidelines contain the fundamental brand information, usually the same information as is posted in the online brand guidelines, with significantly more information for specialized groups.
Figma. Powerful, collaborative and efficient.
A newer approach is to build guidelines directly into Figma. Smooth, distributed digital collaboration is a key feature of Figma, making it ideal for modern teams. It's an incredibly powerful tool when used well, in particular for digital product teams and digitally-driven companies that need to iterate rapidly.
Figma allows designers to load core strategic identity elements like brand colors and typography into UI design system components such as button styles and icons, which can in turn be further iterated on and exported by developers for digital production. The workflow from Figma to Webflow or Figma to Framer is comparatively seamless, making it even more interesting as an option. Building your brand guidelines directly into Figma can create other efficiencies by removing the need for separate UI guidelines documentation, since you can also export frames to hard copies if needed.
A key advantage of Figma for complex organizations is that if a designer revises an original parent component, all other component instances are automatically updated in the system. This reduces the risk that users are exposed to an outdated example of the element or asset.
Figma provides a level of free access, handy for reviewers. Licenses are needed for team members who are designing screens and prototypes in the app.
Recently, Dropbox had a design studio rebuild their brand brand guidelines using the Rive editor, and released them publicly. Rive is a design tool that makes it easier for designers to create animated interactive experiences using vector based graphics (much like Flash in it's day, but without the third-party browser plug-ins).
A Rive interface can be connected to a CMS for maintaining content, for example through a Webflow CMS project interface. It's clearly not for everyone, and probably best for high-level brand guidelines, but an interesting use case for Rive to keep track of.
Most companies today benefit from a combination of online brand guidelines and a PDF guidelines document for the reasons detailed above. Digitally-focused companies can additionally create efficiencies from a guidelines system documented in Figma, so that they can utilize brand components built natively into the file.
Within the digital space there are numerous options, and the landscape is ever changing. We're more than happy to chat about your specific situation and brand management needs, to determine what solution (or combination of solutions) is most effective for you.
Feel free to reach out. We're always ready to help.
