Brand guidelines are crucial for ensuring a consistent brand identity across all communication channels. Whether you're building a brand from the ground up or rejuvenating an existing one, well-crafted guidelines help maintain the integrity of your brand, making it easily recognizable and trustworthy. Below are described the two main ways I can help for crafting comprehensive brand guidelines, either from scratch or by refining and compiling your existing elements.
01. From Scratch: Visual Identity Creation and Brand Book Development
Creating visual identity from scratch is an exciting journey for me, with each next brand. It begins with understanding the core values, vision and mission of your business. This process involves:
a. Research and Discovery: This initial phase focuses on understanding your products and services, market, competitors and target audience. It involves deep diving into your business to capture the core that needs to be communicated.
b. Visual Identity Design: Based on the insight gathered, I start the creative process of designing the visual elements that will showcase your brand. This includes, but is not limited to:
Logo Design: Creating a distinctive logo that reflects your brand’s essence.
Color Palette: Choosing colors that evoke an emotional response from your target audience.
Typography: Selecting typefaces that align with and enhance your brand’s character.
c. Brand Book Compilation: Once the visual identity is established, I compile a brand book that teaches how to properly apply all these elements. Your brand book includes instructions on logo usage, color palette, typography, imagery and much more. This compilation provides consistency is achieved in all branding applications, regardless of the format or platform.
Targeting a health-conscious, Gen Z demographic, TrueSHIELD's branding included a sophisticated logo and packaging design that resonated with its audience. The brand guidelines ensured coherence across digital and physical platforms, reinforcing the brand’s mission of promoting informed decisions about personal health and substance consumption.
CAPAURA, an innovative brand for personalized cooling caps, partnered with Mariya Design to create a total branding from the ground up. From the brand name to the logo, color palette, and typography, everything was crafted to reflect and expand CAPAURA’s idea of innovation, functionality and approachability. The project resulted in a comprehensive brand identity, encapsulated in a sophisticated brand book, that guarantees consistency across all digital and physical touchpoints, laying a strong foundation for the brand's market presence.
Tame Nutrition, a sports nutrition brand, collaborated with Mariya Design to create a sophisticated brand identity from the ground up. The process included market research, logo creation, color palette selection, typography, and packaging design. All that resulted in a 58-page brand book that led to consistent and effective presentation across all platforms, positioning Tame Nutrition as a premium brand in its fierce market of personal wellness.
02. Refining Existing Branding: Enhancing and Completing Your Visual Identity and Brand Book
For brands that already possess relevant visual elements, but may lack either cohesive guidelines or separate components, I offer services to complete, refine and formalize your existing branding:
a. Assessment of Current Branding: I start by reviewing your existing branding materials to identify what is available, what works well and where an improvement could be suggested.
b. Options for Development: There are many. The common use cases include Mariya Design crafting a new visual component, updating an obsolescent one and wrapping everything up:
Creation: There might be missing elements from what is deemed a complete visual identity. In such cases, I point it out and offer to craft and incorporate what’s needed. For example, stationery design, logotype or social media visual communication samples.
Improvement: If certain elements of your current branding require enhancement, I will suggest that to better align the visual identity with your business goals. This may involve modernizing your logo, updating the color scheme or introducing novel typography.
Formalization: For brands already well-designed in the visual aspect, but lacking formal brand guidelines, I focus on compiling a dedicated brand book. It contains clear ruleset for the usage of every brand element and provides consistency across all mediums.
c. Brand Book Crafting and Finalization: Whether entirely created from scratch, partly crafted or just refined, all visual elements and their intended usage are presented in a comprehensive brand book. As stated above, this guide is there to cover the proper implementation of your branding and serves as a reference for maintaining brand coherence in every environment.
Smile Rooms, a dental care provider, sought to modernize its brand while retaining its already identifiable logo. The rebranding introduced a minimalist luxury aesthetic, with suitable color palettes and typography, making the brand aesthetic elevated, yet recognizable and inviting. The following comprehensive brand guidelines provided a much needed unification of brand’s presentation across every dental location and marketing touchpoint.
Blue Giraffe, a real estate recruitment agency, needed a rapid, yet very efficient rebranding. Mariya Design developed a tailored visual identity, including logo refinement and color palette adjustments, all done within just five days. The composed brand book, as usual, provided consistency across platforms, highlighting the value of a thorough branding process.
In the Skincare & Medical industry, Bio-ReCell collaborated with Mariya Design to enhance its brand presence and perception. Their project involved logo refinement, color palette adjustments, and packaging design, resulting in a strong brand identity that represents the company more efficiently, and assists in reaching their marketing goals faster.
Conclusion
Possessing captivating visual identity and functional guidelines is a vital step for any business, critical for ensuring brand integrity, coherence and perception. Whether starting from scratch or refining existing resources, a proper branding serves as your vehicle, and its well-constructed brand book as the roadmap to guide all consecutive brand developments and sustainable business communications. At Mariya Design, I guarantee that crafting a proper Visual Identity and Brand Guidelines for your business will not only enhance your brand’s presentation, but also empower it to thrive in competitive environments, maintaining relevance for the time to come.
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