As part of designing a brand for my bank, I also need to create design brand guidelines for the brand that I have created.
Since I have now completed all the branding elements for my bank, I can start to work on my brand guidelines.
Brand guides (design) are like instruction books, they tell companies and businesses how the brand is supposed to be communicated. Brand guides should consider all the visual details, as well as important extra details about the company's voice, tone, and messaging.
To start my research, I went on to one of my favourite places - Youtube. I hoped through watching some design videos I could get a better idea of what design guidelines are actually about.
The first video I watched taught me just how it could all go wrong if a company is left without a design guideline;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an9_EvwOMNc&feature=emb_title&ab_channel=TheFutur
In this video, an example of made of the wordmark and logo of the "thefutur". Below is the original mark of the brand;
and without a Brand guideline to set things straight, the company would do whatever they wanted with wordmarks and logo. this Including terrible choices such as;
adding an unsuitable background colour
adding unnecessary drop shadows
extorting the size of the logo.
All in all, the video taught me the importance of having guidelines. Professional designers may be able to easily spot the rights and wrongs of a design application, but for the rest of the company working with the logos, I can see how confusion and mistakes can be made. Apart from this, the video summarised the 5 essential elements of creating brand guidelines;
An outline of all the logo and visual assets available
Guidance on when to use each version
colour and typography