brand guide

Every Business Needs A Brand Guide

Whether you own a roofing company, med spa, or sell a product, every business needs a brand guide. A brand speaks through visual language, writes in a consistent voice, takes on a perspective, and evokes a specific feeling, a brand guide ties it all together, therefore every business needs a brand guide.

What Is A Brand Guide?

 A brand guide is a document that details a company’s visual identity, along with rules and guidelines for any client-facing communication. Brand guides set forth rules for how you can use the logo, font type, color, typography, and the brand’s positioning statement. They might also include mission and values.

  Example of a Brand Guide:

brand guide 

The Timing of a Brand Guide

 A brand guide can only be created once all other elements of a brand have been satisfied, which include:

  1. Defined color palette
  2. Hierarchy of typography
  3. Imagery style
  4. Consistent icon family (if applicable)
  5. Logo in color, black, and white
  6. Positioning Statement

The Importance of a Brand Guide

Whether your business is large or small, a brand guide is critical to helping your brand to work effectively. Without the guidelines it provides, your brand’s message can change at any point by using the logo improperly or because you introduce a new color.

Here are just a few of the reasons you need a brand guide:

  1. Brand consistency
  2. Sets standards
  3. Provides a tool
  4. Avoids confusion

Whether you are creating a brand from scratch, pivoting your existing brand, or just developing your brand strategy and its strategies further, every business needs a brand guide to ensure that the brand’s message stays consistent. We’d love to help. It’s never too late to develop brand identity guidelines. In fact, recognizing you need them means it’s the perfect time to have them created.

Hyve Marketing is a true, full-service marketing partner, we can manage all aspects of your marketing needs: branding and design, website development, digital marketing, social media management, paid search, content management, photography, and video production. Contact us today for a complimentary marketing analysis of your existing brand and collateral.

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graphic designer, Denver, CO

DIY or Hire A Professional Designer?

 In our current DIY culture where YouTube videos and Google searches make it easy to save a few bucks by doing your own small marketing projects instead of hiring a professional, it can make you wonder, “Do I really need a graphic designer?”  I mean, anyone who has Canva or Microsoft Paint (yikes!) can create a logo or a social media post, right?

 Why Pay More

Why pay the money to hire a professional to do something that a high schooler can do for a lot less?  Well, let’s answer that question with another – If your plumbing was backed up or the electrical system in your house needed some updates, would you trust yourself to watch a video and take it on or get your family member to do it without any previous plumbing or electrical experience?  Probably (and hopefully) not.

Anything that will have a significant, long-lasting impact requires the experience and tools that a professional in the field possess.  So, when you’re looking to update your brand or create a new logo, would you want to try and figure it out yourself or have a neighbor kid do it that doesn’t know the psychology of the consumer or have the design tools to bring your ideas to life?  Again, hopefully not.

Don’t Risk Your Brand

Your best choice would be to get help from a professional graphic designer that has spent years learning the tools and the psychology of how to present your message visually.  A decent graphic designer will create what you ask them to do.  A great graphic designer will take the time to talk to you about the core message of your business, who you are and what you want to say to your target market before even putting pencil to paper.  They will work with a marketing director to fill in the gaps of what you don’t know about how a brand affects your business to give you the structure for success.  They have the skills and experience to use the most up-to-date design programs to make your brand and collateral look amazing.

A brand isn’t just a logo, and a logo isn’t just a cool icon; it’s the visual representation of your business.  So it’s absolutely worth it to spend the money for professional expertise and skills to refresh or give birth to your brand and everything that goes with it.  It is our passion at Hyve Marketing to help businesses present themselves to customers and clients in the best way possible through amazing branding and we would love to provide that for you.

Hyve Marketing is a true, full-service marketing partner, we can manage all aspects of your marketing needs: branding and design, website development, digital marketing, social media management, paid search, content management, photography, and video production. Contact us today for complimentary marketing analysis of your existing brand and collateral.

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