When you order a brand identity design, your brand/logo design should send you a brand guide along with your brand files. The brand guide details your logo versions, your color palette (with color codes), fonts used in your brand, as well as patterns/textures that the designer created for you.
Here are some samples:
What is it for?
Basically, the purpose of the guide is to make it easier for you to use your brand elements consistently across social media, printed collaterals, blog graphics, and in your website design.
How to use the brand guide:
- Do not modify your logo. Stick to what the designer has sent you, in all its variations. Do not change colors or layout. Do not skew, or modify it in any way.
- Use the exact same colors everywhere your brand is represented. The color codes will make it easy for you to reproduce them either for print or web use. (CMYK or Pantone information for your printers, and hex codes for web use.) You can upload the hex codes on Canva if you want to stay consistent with your social media graphics.
- Use the same fonts. Purchase the fonts so you have a licensed copy that you can use on your computer. Purchase the webfont kit so your website will have the same fonts as your brand.
- Create templates for social media and blog graphics. They will make your life easier, especially if you post quotes or testimonials often. Use the color codes and fonts from your brand guide, and stay consistent in overall style. If your logo fonts have wide letter spacing (or kerning), do the same thing on your graphics (ok maybe for headers only, it’s hard to read long text with widely spaced letters).
- Stay on brand by choosing only images/photographs that are consistent with your color palette and overall style.
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