Traditional brand guidelines are the visual "law" for a company's visual image. They dictate logo usage, color palettes, typefaces, layout and more. As it stands right now, the idea of digital branding guidelines isn't really addressed in most traditional brand guidelines. Online companies such as Netflix, Facebook, eBay and Yelp offer something to digest because they have to, but most non-digital companies are pretty quiet on the digital front. And it's difficult to determine how their brand will translate online when the only documents they have in place for governing brand standards are print and overall identity guidelines.
Most companies are being required to increase their online presence and ramp up their marketing efforts through social media and other digital channels. It's probably a good idea to invest in crafting solid digital brand guidelines, too.
Here are some best practices to consider when creating your digital brand guidelines:
1. Essentials. At the minimum, they should be at least two pages of specific rules that dictate hex color palettes, logo usage, compatible typefaces and general layout practices. They need to correlate styles to the ones established in the traditional guidelines as much as possible. The essentials could also scale up to larger subsets, as done by the BBC.
2. Inspiration. Digital brand guidelines should inspire the spirit of the brand for the online world, as seen on Keebler's site. The essentials are great for the corporate website and e-newsletter, but some amount of flexibility should be expressed as the brand may move into interactive kiosks, iPhone apps, online ad campaigns, Flash micro-sites, social media and beyond.
3. Pitfalls. Guidelines should show examples of what not to do. For example, for social media, logos may need to scale to a size smaller than what the traditional guidelines planned for, so digital rules should anticipate how to handle such situations. And digital guidelines shouldn't generalize web design, like what's shown on pages 28-29 of this university's guidelines.
The aim of digital branding guidelines should be to ensure consistency online and to instill best practices for the digital world. When you've got various people designing email newsletters, making website updates and creating online ads, it might be safer to provide them with more instead of fewer guidelines. Your brand might suffer from a bad Christmas penguin e-card sent out to vendors and clients because it's off-brand and unfocused, or reap great word-of-mouth from a smart campaign like Elf Yourself from Office Max.
So what's it going to take to ensure your brand's consistency in the digital space?
1. Actual Guidelines. A stand-alone digital brand guideline PDF, or at the very least, a section about digital branding that is integrated into the existing guidelines. It should be flexible enough to begin conversation about all kinds of digital projects (social media, kiosks, iPhone apps, online ads, etc), but concrete enough to provide the basics (typefaces, colors, layout suggestions, logo usage, etc).
2. Continued Partnership. Brands should partner with a design agency that understands guidelines and implements them with integrity, responsibility and excellence. Also, having a good brand manager who understands diverse digital platforms can help to facilitate the online implementation and share in the responsibility. Both parties should be asking questions throughout the process to get the best results.
3. Flexibility for the Future. Brands change. The way consumers enjoy products and services is changing, too. And the platform where they are talking about your brand has shifted. All you can do is be flexible enough to change with the needs of your business and the market position of your brand.
By meeting the digital brand challenge now, you'll be making a statement that says, "I'm for the future of our business and want our brand to engage people with lasting and powerful messages.”