Mastering the Art of Brand Identity

Prepare to inject some serious vitality into your brand's heartbeat! We're unpacking the mysteries of branding that will resonate deep within your market's psyche. Forget the days of branding confusion; our chat is the compass you need to navigate the visual and verbal jungles of your brand's identity. We'll cover the power of style guides that anchor you beyond the visual anchor of your logo, ensuring your brand's voice bellows consistently across the vast digital plains.

This episode is a treasure trove for the savvy entrepreneur or the corporate captain steering the ship through the growth squalls. Branding isn't just a stamp; it's the very essence that whispers (or screams) your mission, from the curvature of your fonts to the finesse of your email sign-offs. We even drop hints about our podcast's upcoming metamorphosis – think of that fresh coat of paint on your favorite café, stirring excitement for the tales it will host.

As we wrap up, we take a hard look at the gears of branding within the business machine. We examine the finesse needed for logo versatility, tailored branding across business sectors, and the always looming horizon of rebranding. This is the insider's guide to the whys, hows, and what-ifs of branding, complete with the financial wisdom to navigate the costs of a brand's evolution. Whether you're a newbie to the branding game or a seasoned player, we're here to fuel your journey to a brand that echoes unmistakably across the market's soundscape.

Read our blog on brand guidelines: https://hardendigital.com/easy-steps-to-create-brand-guidelines-a-beginners-guide/

Transcript

Riley: 0:23

Welcome back to another episode of the Digital Wrap-Up. My name is Riley and I'm the host and I'm the CEO of Hardin Digital and Design. Happy to be back. It's been a busy month for us. So it's been a couple of weeks since we did a podcast. We started the year strong and then March hit and everything went to crap. No, not really, but it has been very busy.

Riley: 0:48

I think we only missed like one week, yeah, maybe two, oh, but that's okay. So, yeah, we're back and, as you heard or as you see on YouTube, kaylee is joining us today. So welcome back. So welcome back. Mentioning or speaking of the YouTube, we have a new display for the podcast on YouTube. So if you want to go check it out, go to YouTubecom slash at Hardin Digital to see us on screen and watch and listen to us. At least just go check out the new, the new layout of the podcast for video. It's pretty cool.

Kaylee: 1:29

I think it's crazy that I have to watch people do podcasts too, like I can't just listen to people talk. I have to watch them talk to each other. So I'm glad we're doing the video, even though I don't want to be on it.

Riley: 1:39

That's the one who hates being on video.

Kaylee: 1:42

But I understand it, because I also have to watch people.

Riley: 1:45

Yeah the one who hates being on video, but I understand it because I also have to watch people. Yeah, so, yeah, so, um, yeah, go, go follow us on youtube, subscribe, uh, like this video and also follow us on your favorite podcast app, whether it's spotify, apple, um, google, amazon. Whatever you listen to your podcast on, please give us a follow and share it with your friends and family. I know Spotify actually shows the number of followers shows have now, which is interesting. I haven't looked at ours.

Kaylee: 2:14

It's probably our seven family members. No, we appreciate all of you, non-related or otherwise appreciate all of you non-related or otherwise about.

Riley: 2:36

Let's see, it doesn't show. Well, I follow us. So on spotify, yeah, it just shows a number of reviews. We have five, we're rated five stars, so that's good. I don't follow us, uh-oh.

Riley: 2:48

I download every episode, but that's okay. Anyways, we're excited to be back on the podcast. This throw a little teaser out there Either the last or second-to-last podcast in the studio. Big things are coming start of April. I'll leave it at that. You'll see a new look soon and some other things that come with that. But a lot of exciting things. Part part of why we've been busy, but, yeah, just a lot coming up in the next month.

Riley: 3:24

So today have Kaylee on because we've talked a lot about different branding and graph design and things um, through several episodes. It seems to get mixed in in different episodes throughout the podcast, but we've never really dedicated a full episode to branding and style guides and brand guidelines and things like that that business owners should really be thinking about if you haven't established this and done it for your business yet. So this episode is all about creating brand guidelines, creating a style guide for your business and you know this goes beyond just creating a logo, but everything from mission statement, vision statement, colors, text font, all like all of it wrapped into one that your business and your employees should be following when creating any type of designs. Your email.

Kaylee: 4:24

Yeah, signatures, like how you talk about the company, like it's the whole all encompassing brand.

Riley: 4:33

I don't know how to explain it so it's a full episode dedicated specifically to branding for your business, so super excited to get into this one Again. Go check us out on YouTube, youtubecom, slash at hardened digital and let's just go ahead and jump into it. So branding, what does it mean?

Kaylee: 5:09

of your company. Yeah, like we said. A second, like it can be photos, it can be logos, it can be the colors that you use or it can be the personality of your social media, like anything in between. I don't think people think that big when they're talking about their brand. People will just start a business and say, hey, I got a business, I got a Facebook page.

Riley: 5:29

People will call it good and I'd say most business owners go one step further. But that's just. I need a logo. And then they stop at the logo, yes.

Kaylee: 5:40

And then it's like they don't think about everything else.

Riley: 5:43

They don't think about the colors and the logo and implementing those and everything else they do. They don't think about anything beyond just okay. Now I have this circle logo that I made on Canva.

Kaylee: 5:54

Right, which is part of it. It's part of the steps, but I think it comes more into play whenever you get more than one employee.

Riley: 6:04

Yeah.

Kaylee: 6:04

Like if it's just you and you're representing your company how you want to, that's fine. Say you hire six people and each of them is using a different logo and each of them is using a different font and a different style, even to create things like to send out letters on a letterhead.

Riley: 6:22

Yeah.

Kaylee: 6:22

If you've all got a different letterhead, how does anyone know that's coming from the same company? So it's a whole bunch of small elements that all come together, but if you don't have that specified anywhere, no one's going to know the rules and be able to follow them. Yeah.

Kaylee: 7:01

Yeah, so before we, get into the nitty gritty of building your brand guidelines. You know, going step by step. What are some of the general terms that for people listening, they need to know what they mean before we start talking about all this stuff so that they're not just like I have no idea what she's talking about. Um, I guess the first one you'll say guidelines. I don't ever say guidelines. I say when I'm asking people that I'm working with to send me their brand guidelines, I just said you have a style guide. So that's what I'm going to refer to it as. Probably that's like the actual physical well, maybe not physical digital pdf of like these are the rules. So I call that a style guide.

Kaylee: 7:28

Um, a lot of things people don't think about unless you've taken 6,000 marketing classes is the brand identity. Um, that includes all the visuals, but also that's where the tone comes in the language that you use. That's all part of the identity of your company and some of it really is like how you speak about what your company does. And then people talk a lot about brand consistency. So I think that one's kind of self-explanatory but just in general consistency is key to this whole process. So that's one of the big things I'll be talking about and why does?

Kaylee: 8:20

consistency matter in terms of branding and styles for your business, business, um. Well, another thing that you hear all throughout marketing classes in college is brand loyalty, building trust in what brand you're looking into? Um, just brand recognition in general. Uh, if, once again, if you don't have a logo that you use consistently, no one's going to associate it with the correct company so I mean, think about all of your favorite brands.

Riley: 8:49

Um, you could probably recognize them just by their logo or just by the font and color of something on a graphic or yeah, um, you know a lot of the brands, bigger brands obviously I hate using those as examples because those are huge, yeah, but you know the Nikes, the Adidas.

Kaylee: 9:08

It could be small stuff like everyone Okay, not everyone. Let me take that back. The Harry Potter font you put that on something else that's not Harry Potter related.

Riley: 9:18

Yeah.

Kaylee: 9:18

And people will still associate it with Harry Potter.

Riley: 9:21

Yeah, that's a good example, because that's font, that's not even a logo.

Kaylee: 9:24

Yeah, that's a good example, because that's font, it's not even a logo. Or like Tiffany Blue, that is a color that's recognizable for one company. North Carolina, blue, tennessee, orange, all of that that is the kind of stuff that you want people right off the bat to recognize you. That's why choosing maybe not normal yeah, colors are not normal fonts sometimes helps you out. If you're going to be blasting that all over the place, at least people will recognize that it's you yeah, and this can be achieved.

Riley: 9:58

You know we work with a lot of small businesses that aren't, you know, these global brands or these huge brands. But you can do, you can have the same effect, but with people in your community, even if it's a small town. Um, you know, a lot of businesses tend to be very literal with their logos. I think we've talked about that before, but, um, you know. So obviously that helps if there, if the logo says the sandwich shop.

Kaylee: 10:38

Obviously it's a sandwich shop, but you can use these other elements to still gain that trust and that loyalty without just having a circle with your name in it and like just here locally in Tipton. A new example is the shack that just opened. I don't know how I missed this information, but the fact that the owner also owns 10 West. I didn't even put that together. All I know is when we sat down at the shack like, this menu looks like 10 West. What do you know? It's the same company. Automatically, if you know that and you know that 10 west is a good place, you're going to trust that the other business by the same owners is going to be the same quality, the same atmosphere, whatever, because it's the same branding yeah, so that's a good example of local.

Riley: 11:19

I mean, we're talking cicero, indiana, and tipton, indiana, indiana, two small towns, but still done well enough.

Kaylee: 11:28

That's the whole like building trust and building a relationship with your potential customers is that if they trust one of your companies, then you open another one. You already have that automatically coming with you.

Riley: 11:47

So I wonder how many people besides you picked up on that?

Kaylee: 11:48

probably no one, I highly doubt people looked at the menu and were like, hmm, this is the same exact font that they use at a completely different restaurant. I'm sure most people already knew the information though. So yeah, but it's kind of like franchising if you I mean big franchises are different, but if you have a local store in tipton and then I go to kokomo and I see, oh look, that looks like the same store and I already know the one in tipton is good yeah, makes sense, all right, any other words we kind of got off topic, yeah.

Riley: 12:27

Any other words or phrases or things that we're going to talk about that people might not know and we want to just define before we get too far into it.

Kaylee: 12:38

I don't think so. I think we'll get. If anything else comes up, I can explain. I don't think so. I think we'll get if anything else comes up, I can explain. I didn't like make a whole list of every branding marketing term out there. Darn, It'd be a terribly boring podcast.

Riley: 12:58

This is this word, this is what it means. Here is an example.

Kaylee: 13:03

Okay, so let's go ahead and get into it. Where do we want to start? Well, normally at the beginning of when you're starting a business, or even if you have one that's established but you haven't necessarily gone this in depth into your brand. There's kind of a lot that you have to think about before you can set it in stone.

Kaylee: 13:24

even yesterday, when we talked on the phone to a potential new client. She's like I haven't even thought about that yet. But um, there's things you need to kind of collect, like you have to write a mission statement. You have to think about your brand core values what are those going to be? You have to think about if the domain name is available. I know that's not on my list here, but all of these things have to go together even to pick a name, and then there from the name you have to go to the logo, and it's like so many things all at once.

Riley: 14:01

All at once.

Kaylee: 14:04

So part of it is I don't even know how to start talking about it.

Riley: 14:11

Because there's so much. There's so much.

Kaylee: 14:13

Yeah, I would start probably with what you want the purpose of your company to be, your mission statement, your vision, your values. You don't even know what your mission is I'm not sure where to start. I feel like we just wrote it down not that long ago. We might have rethought it or changed it or something and I don't think so.

Riley: 14:39

Our mission is to help businesses succeed through custom marketing solutions yes, straight on our website.

Kaylee: 14:45

Yeah, I do remember when we talked about it, though, because that was going to be front and center. Like you have to be specific as well. That's a big thing. You can't say like our mission is to sell clothes.

Riley: 15:00

Yeah.

Kaylee: 15:01

Okay, our mission is to provide recyclable, eco-friendly paper product to moms. I don't know.

Riley: 15:15

Interesting.

Kaylee: 15:16

You have to be the point of that. That was a terrible example. I cannot do this on the fly. The point of it is with your mission and your vision. You've got to be specific. You have to know who your customers are going to be Once again, what values you want to have. If you're all about being green, that's going to be weaved in through your whole brand identity. Yeah, If you don't care about that and just want to cause a scene, I don't know so.

Riley: 15:51

So some of this is not 100, just branding and style and everything like the mission and vision and core values. That's a broader business plan business yes, but it needs to go into your style guide and it also is something that should be reflected in your branding and in your style yes, you know you mentioned the. If you're very recycle friendly or you're very green, you probably want to incorporate that into your, your branding, if possible, or at least be thinking about it, right?

Kaylee: 16:29

yes, I think the difference is people only think about the visual side of branding.

Riley: 16:36

Yeah, where this stuff, the language that you use, the personality, it's all in the visual, but it also has to be defined somewhere, yeah, so if you've never sat down and thought about it and you're just picking colors because you like them we've talked about that a hundred times, which I technically did right but I didn't have anything specific to what the business was doing, the values of the business, so I I you gotta have some flexibility in terms of I just got to pick a color that I liked, so I picked blue yeah, but if your whole brand personality is like upbeat, fun, joking, exciting, and then your colors are brown and black, dark and and miserable dark and scary Like that doesn't match.

Kaylee: 17:24

So all of it has to go together and you don't necessarily have to sit down and say like here's my entire lifetime of this business plan.

Riley: 17:36

Yeah.

Kaylee: 17:37

But you've got to at least think about it. And the other part of it is, once again, if you hire on employees and you end up getting bigger, if you have satellite offices all over the country and these people hire in and they need to know the basics of your company, here it is, here's our mission, here's our vision, here's how we want to represent ourselves. Here's our mission, here's our vision. Here's how we want to represent ourselves. Here's how we want to word our emails. It doesn't have to get that in depth but, like some places use a lot more fun, crazy language, and in a professional world that's not always the case.

Kaylee: 18:22

So that's stuff that you need to know ahead of time as a new employee, as a new manager, as a business owner, things like schools. To me, school style guides are one of the most important, because there's a right way and a wrong way to do things for a school. I guess there are things you can't say. There are things you can't say. There are things you can't represent.

Riley: 18:51

You have to be more of like a government in general.

Kaylee: 18:53

Yeah, yeah you've got to be on a certain pg level and that needs to be written down as a rule somewhere that you can't say these inappropriate things, or you can't reference this, or you can't yep, and you think some of this is common sense. But it's not always yeah, you would think um all right, so what's? Next? What's next is, once you've got the general overview of what your company represents.

Riley: 19:29

You put together all this information we kind of just talked about, which goes a long way in business planning.

Kaylee: 19:34

Yes, so then, if you already have your logo, you already have your color palette. That's great. You just need to write it down. You just need to write it down. Um, if you've worked with a graphic designer like that's something that I provide as part of our logo package. I'm not just gonna say here's one jpeg, here you go. Yeah, no, I'm gonna tell you the fonts, at least, that I used in the logo. I'm gonna tell you the exact colors. I'm going to tell you here's what you can use for social media profile images like that's all provided for me, because that's what I would want yeah um.

Kaylee: 20:14

So then it's kind of collecting all of the visual elements. There's also things about. I just feel like this is so overwhelming.

Riley: 20:26

It is.

Kaylee: 20:26

So I'm trying to keep it in order, but in my head I think about this and then it goes to the next thing. Okay, so the basics, the logo package. You want as many versions of that logo as you can. There isn't going to just be one. A lot of people don't understand that when I send it to them, Like I will send you a vertical version or a square version and then I'll send you, like a long, skinny, horizontal version still the same logo.

Riley: 20:56

Yep and there's different uses for them.

Kaylee: 20:58

Yes.

Riley: 20:58

So, for example, website design, a lot of people put their logo in the header of their website, right? You can't necessarily put a vertical or square logo into a header of a website, because that expands the height of the header and then you have this huge header but then the top menu is just font, yeah and text, and then it's just a bunch of empty white space and that's the very first thing people see, right? That's not good. So, like, if you look at our website, for example, we have a horizontal version of our logo and then, going beyond that, a lot of most websites you should have one, the site icon, which is the kind of logo that appears in the tab at whenever you're clicked on that website. That's got to be a super tiny version of your logo. You can't have the full horizontal, you can't even have the full square or the full vertical logo. It's literally just an icon. Or the full vertical logo it's literally just an icon, right? So, like, for us it's a chat bubble and that's all that fits in that small amount of space.

Kaylee: 22:12

But that's still a complete representation of our company. Yeah, so when I'm thinking logo, people always think it's one or the other. I'm like no, these are still our logo, it's just a different orientation of it, so you don't have to pick one or the other.

Riley: 22:33

Yes, and I think we should clarify that we're talking about different versions of the logo, but we're not saying here's a vertical logo, here's a completely different, here's a completely different horizontal one, because we know we need a horizontal one no it's the same elements, just arranged differently to fit in a different space.

Kaylee: 22:56

Yeah, but a lot of times, I'll send it to people and say, okay, here is the concept for your business. It has multiple different versions of the logo and they're like okay, I like the left, one like no these are all.

Riley: 23:12

They're all the logo and like another example too, just for people who aren't in the website design or you don't know much about websites is your facebook profile image right? You, you technically can upload a square right, but what's cropped is? It crops it into a circle. So if you have this super horizontal logo, it's going to look weird.

Kaylee: 23:37

It might get cropped off. It's going to be tiny.

Riley: 23:40

Right, but if you again we just use the chat bubble. That's like almost everyone is our, our brand or is the recognizable thing about our business, and that's. It can be used just as an icon. It can be used just as a Facebook or social media profile image. And then it gets rearranged and either stacked next to or on top of hardened digital and design and all of this.

Kaylee: 24:07

When I'm creating a logo for someone, all of that comes with it, because I'm thinking of all the potential uses you'll have for it. If you just have one logo, that's what you're stuck with, I. I would want to do something about that. It's not great. It's not great, but that's what people think, and I it.

Riley: 24:30

That's probably what differentiates us more than just a random person going on canva and designing a logo is that we think about all this other stuff and I create the social media profile picture for people when I'm doing their logo.

Riley: 24:44

So when you think, oh, why are you several hundred dollars to design? Just to design a logo? We're not just giving you a logo. We're giving you a logo package that has all this, so that when you go and build your website or upload your Facebook profile photo, you have the exact version that's going to look best and is going to represent you, instead of having this same logo on everything that doesn't really look right whenever it's cropped or filled in or whatever it may be.

Kaylee: 25:16

Right. It can even be things like when you try to put it on a shirt.

Kaylee: 25:20

Yeah, get it embroidered If you want to embroider it, that's going to look different than if you embroider it on a hat, that's, the spacing is different, like you have to just have multiple versions. Yeah, so that's something that would need to go in the style guide. Yeah, so, different versions of logo, different icons, different icons a lot of companies too have, like, if they have different sectors of their business, each sector may have its own variation of the logo, may have its own icons specifically to that area, and that would all be included. So then everything is still consistent yeah within the different areas of the company.

Kaylee: 26:04

That's going to be when you're bigger but, like iu, school of medicine has seems like an infinite amount of logos. You've got it for all the different departments. They have their own logo that they put on things. It all still says iu, school of medicine, but then they're separate for each area yeah it's not just people throwing the and it's different than the iu like university logo yeah it's all still one giant brand.

Kaylee: 26:40

Sometimes universities have, like the school logo and then the athletic logo, which I don't think people know that either Definitely not. My university had different colors for the school versus the athletic department.

Riley: 26:55

Yeah, that one's kind of weird. In my opinion. I understand different logos, are different layouts of logos, because one's cleaner, crisper, smaller, whatever it may be, but having a whole different set of colors is kind of weird A lot of them, since I've been looking at this March Madness color and mascot and logo things for the brackets.

Kaylee: 27:19

you'd be surprised how many universities have completely different branding for the athletics versus the school.

Riley: 27:27

Interesting.

Kaylee: 27:29

But that's something that people don't think about. People don't know that information.

Riley: 27:34

Yeah.

Kaylee: 27:36

And if you've never owned a business, you have really no need. A lot of times, if you don't own a business, you don't need to know this information, so it's when, then, you start your own business and you've never even heard of branding.

Riley: 27:50

Or you take over a business or you start a new job and they don't have this. But you know, we should probably do something, but I don't know how to do it.

Kaylee: 27:59

Yes, and when I go to design things for a company, that's the first thing I ask them is do you have a style guide?

Riley: 28:08

90% of the time no.

Kaylee: 28:10

They don't. They're like no, just do whatever you want.

Riley: 28:13

Yeah.

Kaylee: 28:15

Like that is not. That makes me cringe. Yeah, that stresses me out, because then I'm designing something that may look completely opposite of what you've done in the past the bad part about that is a lot of people don't care yes, 100. I think people do not care let's start a movement.

Riley: 28:37

People care about branding they should care.

Kaylee: 28:42

We've had clients that they'll switch companies and then be like I need a new business card but use these same exact colors from my old business.

Riley: 28:49

Yeah.

Kaylee: 28:50

You can't do that. Your new business marketing person would have a fit if they knew that. You just said that.

Riley: 29:00

Hashtag make people care about branding.

Kaylee: 29:04

Branding matters. Branding matters that's the new hashtag. Yes, consistency matters that's branding matters, the new hashtag. Yes, consistency matters. Even from one facebook graphic to the next, if you completely change the look of it, no one's going to recognize that it came from the same place. Yep, I'm not saying they have to all look exactly the same but like.

Kaylee: 29:27

That's why you choose fonts for your business. You choose fonts that will be used for headlines, you choose the fonts that will be used for the body copy, the subheads, any kind of little blurbs. You can have a set of ones that you use online versus ones that you're printing things. But that's all stuff that needs to be decided in advance. Then no one can question it yeah, all right.

Riley: 29:59

So what's up next? What's up next?

Kaylee: 30:04

What's up next. Once you've thought about all this and you've made some decisions, you put it all together into an actual guide.

Riley: 30:18

Yes, so first thing that's going to be in there when you open up anybody's style guide, it's going to be like we started before we get to that, what people can get stuck in this phase or this particular part of the business putting together a business because they just overthink everything? Should people say they're you know 75% of the way there? Should people, you know, experiment, you know like go on to the next parts and then, oh well, okay, that doesn't look well, that doesn't look good together, go back and revisit it? Or should you 100% be done with everything we just talked about before moving on to the next part?

Kaylee: 31:10

No, you can try things, especially if it's a brand new business and you're not 100% sure what you want to do with it.

Riley: 31:18

Yeah, I guess that's a good point of you're in a good position when you're starting a business and you haven't published all this stuff yet, yeah, whereas if you publish it and you're not 100 on it and then three months down the road, uh, it's not great.

Kaylee: 31:40

I'm gonna change it. Well, and now you're starting over, you can also rebrand.

Riley: 31:45

That's a whole another thing you can you can't do it all the time but as a new business, take your time. Why rebrand in three to six months down the road? Yes, instead of you know, a rebrand should be, you know, every five to plus years, maybe if every once in a while, if you have a good reason, yeah.

Kaylee: 32:07

But this is the kind of thing like all of this branding shouldn't be decided in one day. No, this is like a sit down and think about it and really get down to it, because once you commit to it and once you put it on, you should stick with it yeah, for a while a while, I mean it's not something of oh, I really liked blue because it's my favorite color.

Riley: 32:30

I didn't put a lot of thought into it, I just know I wanted it to be blue. And then now you start doing everything and blue just doesn't. The shade of blue you use doesn't go well with anything else. It's hard to match when creating graphics. It doesn't look great on t-shirts. Now, all of a sudden, I want to use right our colors to be yellow that's why you have to think about it for a long time yeah, and that's the kind of stuff people don't think about.

Kaylee: 32:57

Like if you have to wear t-shirts for your job and all the employees at your whole place have to wear t-shirts, but you pick colors that don't come in standard yeah shirts. What's your plan like?

Riley: 33:13

yeah, I mean there. Oh, there are ways around that, right but.

Kaylee: 33:18

But some of it too is like what color are you going to paint the inside of your building? The outside of your building Is your sign outside going to stand out. There's so many things to think about. That's why it's overwhelming. That's why you hire a marketing company to maybe do this for you, because you can sit down with me and tell me about your business and then it's up to me to decide what would work best for you. Yeah, and then you can say, no, I hate it.

Riley: 33:54

That's our new sales pitch. Come to us if you want to stress, kaylee.

Kaylee: 33:59

Come to us if you're overwhelmed.

Riley: 34:00

Yes, and then pass your your overwhelmed yes that then pass your your overwhelmed miss. That's a word. Pass that on to Kaylee.

Kaylee: 34:09

Because it's. I think it's different too when it's not your business.

Riley: 34:13

Yeah.

Kaylee: 34:13

Like me, being objective and choosing these things based on what's best for the business is easier than you being attached to something that isn't going to work. Like you said, if you really are dead set on your color being purple, it's easier than you being attached to something that isn't going to work. No-transcript.

Riley: 34:45

I'm really glad I could do blue and we didn't have to have that conversation.

Kaylee: 34:47

It happened to work out, yeah, but there's also like I, you and I'm sure you did too, but I spent years and many, many, many classes learning about this yeah, over my head. Oh well, my very first college communications class was like just this.

Riley: 35:11

Yeah, the whole creative graphic design side of the school was bad. And I openly say that. That's why I brought you on.

Kaylee: 35:21

Yeah, but there's so much depth From a writing standpoint though. Yes, so much, there's so much From a writing standpoint though.

Riley: 35:26

Yes, like that's my expertise the, the mission statement, the, the how you communicate about your business, whether it's spoken word or text, and even kind of fonts, the consistency of that type of stuff.

Kaylee: 35:44

That's when I get more involved yeah, but you've seen it when we did the website for the boys and girls club. Their style guide is massive. It is huge. They've got paragraphs written in already of marketing the boys and girls club to different audiences. They have different paragraphs pre-written for you. Yeah, that was nice because we could just plug and play with that Right, but somebody spent a lot of time putting this out there. But it's communicating to kids versus communicating to parents versus communicating to donors. That's like three different tones of voice completely yep nobody thinks of that.

Kaylee: 36:31

Even if you worked for the company, if that didn't already exist, would you be like, hmm, I wonder if this is the correct way to word what we represent no, they're probably just type it up, send it off, because got to move on to the next thing, right?

Riley: 36:46

So?

Kaylee: 36:47

So the more in-depth you get from the beginning, the easier it is in the long run. Yeah, if you don't think about it now and you're having to think about it midway through your first five years and you're like, oh crap, everything I've made is all over the place.

Riley: 37:06

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's a lot of work, but it's worth it.

Kaylee: 37:12

it's worth it up front for the consistency, yeah, even between employees. If one person has a business card and the other person's business card looks different, you both give them to somebody. They're gonna think you work for different companies yeah, that's a valid point.

Kaylee: 37:28

Yeah, but it's happened so it's a lot easier to see bad examples. I feel like there are a lot more mess ups out there than there are like really good, yeah, which is so sad, but that's what I catch. That's what I see all the time I notice it more when it's bad. Yeah same I don't see a company that's doing it well and be like wow, that was amazing. All their facebook graphics look the same and they match. Yeah, I'm just like what in the heck is this thing? Who approved this?

Riley: 38:08

yeah, all right, so let's get down to the next part here where are we at? I wrote so much down on my list kind of the step by step, step by step okay, so once you've thought about all this, you spent however long you felt like was necessary and months and days and months, I hope not a year, I don't know if it's a year're. You got a lot of free time. You just got to move on.

Kaylee: 38:35

So first thing that you're going to put in your style guide is your mission, your vision, your values. Define it straight from the beginning and move on from there. So there's going to be a couple pages in there that are just like wording.

Riley: 38:47

Yeah.

Kaylee: 38:47

But then your mission and your vision should be plastered everywhere. Everybody in your whole stinking company should know this is our mission statement. So that's going in first. That's also going to set the tone for the rest of the thing. So then your visual elements are next. That's probably the biggest chunk of your style guide.

Riley: 39:11

Yeah.

Kaylee: 39:12

And that starts with your logo ways to use the logo incorrect ways, things you're not allowed to do. That's really to me. That's helpful in a style guide. It's like okay, here it is. Sometimes it'll be like you have to have this amount of white space all the way around the logo yeah. That's helpful.

Kaylee: 39:35

As a designer who might be using other people's logos, it's very helpful yeah if you say my logo can only go on white background, that's the rule, then that's it. So include all the rules of this is how you can use it and then put in there examples of this is how you can't do it. The biggest one I see is not to stretch things. If your logo is this proportion, you have to stretch it proportionally. You can't just For everyone who is listening. I'm so sorry. I'm trying to explain, but you can go. You can't go up and down or stretch it long ways Diagonal. It has to go proportionally. So everything logo-wise needs to be in there. That is the visual representation of your company. If people are using your logo wrong, you're already in trouble.

Kaylee: 40:32

Yeah, that will also need to include all the different variations. You have different department logos, all that it all goes in there. You're going to include your fonts. You're going to include all of your colors and a lot of times how much usage of each color, which people don't really think about either. If your main color is, we'll go with IU, for example, because it's in my head, their crimson is like 60 plus percent of the time you should be using that color, and then they have secondary colors that are, like you know, 20 to 30%. And then they have a whole third set of like accent colors. If you absolutely must use, yeah, like a color specifically that can only be used as a headline. They have specific colors you can use on the web versus what you use in print. All of that needs to be defined and then there's no guessing what's allowed yeah um, if certain colors represent certain areas of your business, include that in there.

Kaylee: 41:41

Um, there should probably be a whole section on photos and video, which we haven't even talked about. Yeah, but photos and video can have a style, yeah, I mean the Boys and Girls Club.

Riley: 41:57

I don't know if that one included photos and videos, but yeah.

Kaylee: 42:01

It had info about photos, at least About they want people smiling. They don't want 17 people in each photo. It's supposed to be like focused in. They don't. Some people don't want candid shots. Some people only want candid shots. Some businesses only use black and white photos in advertising, like.

Kaylee: 42:22

But you have to set that in stone at the beginning. If you want all your people to look sad because whatever your business is, that's the vibe you're going for, that has to be written somewhere. If you want all your videos to be like sweeping grass and fields and prairies and then like one person walking across slowly, like whatever it is that you're going for, has to be written down, yeah. And then when you hire a photographer, you hire a videographer, you say here you go. Then they have clear instructions on what to do. Then there will be a section on how you can edit photos. Super overwhelming. This is like so much info coming at you. But if you don't want to allow for any objects to go over photos, you can put that in there. You can put. I only want things to go over it if it's at a 60% transparency, like there can be whatever rules you feel like making up, but as long as you write them down, yeah then people can follow them.

Kaylee: 43:36

If you don't want your logo going over top of a photo, put that in there. Um so photo styling I feel like could get really in depth, if you feel like it, but I would maybe keep it to your absolute.

Riley: 43:53

Overall feel Right.

Kaylee: 43:55

Overall feel and then absolute no's. I think it would be more helpful. You cannot do these things. Makes sense. Regen Street has a huge section in their style guide about photo usage.

Riley: 44:07

Makes sense. I don't know if people they're a big company yeah, they're a very large company.

Kaylee: 44:14

Visual elements what else comes visually, that's pretty much it. I mean, whatever rules you want to include in there, put them in there, it's your business. It's your business. The next section would be probably voice and tone, and that doesn't have to be crazy. It's a lot different now that there's so much social media. Yeah, like back in the day you didn't have that in your style guide, but now that whole like personality of your business has to come in somewhere.

Riley: 44:45

Yep, I mean voice and tone is big on social media in general. Yeah, so this section it's not so much necessarily about like how you respond in emails and things like that, but, yeah, definitely social media.

Kaylee: 45:02

I've seen a lot of style guides that say like whether or not you can or can't use emojis in your social media. If you're like a hard no, you don't want emojis in there and it's written down, then nobody can use emojis fair enough, if you want.

Riley: 45:18

That's a new rule here no more emojis I like emojis.

Kaylee: 45:20

Well, it has its place, it's actually not great to use.

Kaylee: 45:27

There's like accessibility reasons for it, but well, and also the people who put 27 000 yeah, emojis, like there should be a rule within their company, but also things like if you want everything to be written from first person, or if you want everything online to be written as a we or a the company does this or if you can define that ahead of time. It just makes it easier. Things like if you're going to use AP style, if you're going to write numbers out fully, if you're going to write the dates a certain way that's the kind of stuff that is kind of like nitpicky, but if you want it to be consistent, yeah, I definitely think some of this is geared towards bigger businesses, more so than you know.

Riley: 46:24

Our, our business, it's three employees, right? So you know weighing how in depth you really need to go. Obviously, I think you have to go more in depth the more people you have on your team. Yeah is a good way to put it I agree with that.

Kaylee: 46:43

Some of it too is like if you haven't ever worked in a world where you even know what AP style is, is that going to help you? Within a style guide? Probably not. Yeah, am I going to whip out a style book? Sometimes, actually, so I can't say I've never done that yeah. But things like if you're going to use abbreviations for things or if you're going to spell them out, or yeah.

Kaylee: 47:11

Once again, the bigger your business. Also depends on who your audience is people who do international work. You could have a whole section in your style guide about like how to communicate in a different language. In a different language, but like rules on how that would work the appropriate tone to have, the appropriate way to address people. Yeah, it's once again so much information.

Riley: 47:42

All right, moving on to the next.

Kaylee: 47:44

Okay, after tone and voice, I think this would be called the example section. Yeah, where you put in there this is how your letterhead should look. This is exactly your six options for a business card. A lot of almost every style guide I've seen has specifically business cards in there.

Riley: 48:06

Interesting.

Kaylee: 48:07

It's basically just different layouts that are going to be common, and what is acceptable and what's not.

Riley: 48:14

Yeah.

Kaylee: 48:15

So then, once again, nobody can question it. Then if, for some reason, you are having a designer do it, they can look at the style guide and say, okay, here's what it needs to look like. Yeah, I like examples, I definitely like. Hey, this is not acceptable.

Riley: 48:32

Yeah, I mean, it's literally something like you have the logo, how do you? Yes, and then you have the logo with it altered somehow, and then you just put red X's. Yeah, that's all you gotta do, and up to this point, yeah.

Kaylee: 48:48

Up to this point, you have all the pieces of how to lay these things out, but this is like the examples of. This is what it's going to look like.

Riley: 48:56

Yeah.

Kaylee: 48:57

So I like the do's and don'ts. And then the last thing I don't know if everyone always puts this in there is going to be using your branding for any reason. There can be a section on either what they're allowed to use or how they can contact you to get that information.

Riley: 49:20

Yeah, I think it's important if you do a lot of partnerships or you do a lot of sponsorships and you're getting your logo thrown up on a yard sign or a banner and things like that. That's the part that drives me crazy is, you know, when you see your logo on a sign or a graphic and it gets stretched or stuff like that, that's where this comes in that's the big part of it okay, here's my.

Riley: 49:47

You know businesses ask for your logo whenever you do sponsorships like hey, can you send me a copy of your logo? Sure, here's our brand guidelines PDF as well. Please make sure you follow them, yeah.

Kaylee: 49:57

Do people follow it?

Riley: 49:59

No, but then you can at least be.

Kaylee: 50:02

Then, if you see the proof of it yeah, you see the proof of it and you say you stretched my logo. You can't do that.

Riley: 50:09

I told you not, you can't do that. I told you not Right, you can at least like justify. Hey, we said here are our brand guidelines, here's our style guide.

Kaylee: 50:16

Right, and that's why a lot of logos online you can't even get yeah, because they don't want people using them incorrectly.

Riley: 50:24

Yeah, I mean you could Google search, but then you get a JPEG and it's not.

Kaylee: 50:28

Right, but a lot of times if I search for, we'll use IU again. If you search for are this company's colors, it will take you directly to their branding information online, yeah, where, if you take the time to read it, it lays it all out for you.

Kaylee: 51:08

So that's for, I guess, outside usage and employees. A lot of this stuff is. Employees maybe never been educated on branding. Yeah, so it doesn't even cross their minds that there are rules, especially if you've been doing it this way for so long and all of a sudden I'm like, hey, you can't use our logo like that. You'd be like, wait a minute, what? I've been doing this for years, so that's why doing it from the jump is better. But also just to sit down and say, like it's important that we do this so that people will recognize us.

Kaylee: 51:43

All that stuff you thought about at the beginning of, like why branding is important, has to be explained to people. Yeah, I don't know, like you said, people don't care, people don't think about it. Has to be explained to people. Yeah, I don't know, like you said, people don't care, people don't think about it. But if you put it out there in a way that, like this helps us, this is what makes people trust us. This is what's going to make us recognizable. This is how people are going to be loyal to us as a brand.

Riley: 52:10

Maybe it'll click in people's head, I don't know yeah, okay, so that's really like the step-by-step guide of you know, do this, put this in there. This is what your style guide should look like, how it should be laid out. What's next? Is there anything that beyond that we've kind of touched on? You know, making sure your employees so like I know that was something that you wanted to talk about. Um, you know it is important. You want your employees to follow. You put the time and effort into developing it. Now you got to make sure it's make sure people are following it.

Kaylee: 52:48

Yeah it's also something that, like you said, if you do a lot of partnerships or you do a lot of sponsorships, even within your company, and you're using other people's logos, to be aware and to make sure you ask them what their rules are yeah, because you don't want to say like, oh well, this person stretched my logo and then do the exact same thing back to somebody else true, so it's, I think, good to notice that for everyone. It's also something like you said before is that you want to reevaluate in X amount of years and you think that your branding isn't doing what you wanted it to do. You can do that. It's okay to change it.

Riley: 53:30

Yeah.

Kaylee: 53:31

If you're going to completely rebrand, then you have to start from scratch on this whole thing. I wouldn't recommend probably ever just changing one or two things, like unless those one or two things are so major, but like you can't just change your fonts every year for fun, like that doesn't make any sense, that's not worth it, yeah I don't think if you're gonna change your colors, there should be a reason.

Kaylee: 54:02

If you're ever going to change your logo, it needs to be for a purpose, not just I no longer like it like. There needs to be a very, very specific reason and it needs to be better yeah like you, should always be doing it for improvement of your brand recognition yeah, not just. Oh. It's been a couple years. I want a new logo, first of all, the money you're gonna have to spend to replace that logo on everything is crazy. Oh okay, yeah, like print stuff If you have it printed all over the thing.

Riley: 54:37

T-shirts and yeah, yeah, yeah. If it's wrapped on the side of your vehicles and it's on your building and yeah, I thought you meant like to get it actually designed and then it's like oh, there's a can of the Warriors out there, but no, I'm talking like if it's printed everywhere. Yeah, you have to redo all that stuff, right.

Kaylee: 54:55

And if you're not doing it for a reason, you're just wasting money, yeah.

Riley: 55:01

Okay.

Kaylee: 55:02

So that was so much information.

Riley: 55:04

Are you overwhelmed yet?

Kaylee: 55:07

I'm overwhelmed and it was my conversation.

Riley: 55:10

Yeah, but I think, circling back, it is why you know we're here for you, like that's what we do, that's why it it can be overwhelming for us yes, but we're we. Kaylee is you know, she's the one that is skilled in this and trained in it and knows what she's doing. You don't right, and that's why you're here listening and getting help. Um, so she knows how to work through it, she knows what she's doing, instead of just getting to this place and be like, oh, I'm so overwhelmed I don't know what to do, so I'm just gonna go up and not do it.

Kaylee: 55:46

Right, that's what I think most people do so even if people are listening and all they're getting out of it is like oh, I've never even thought about that. I should start yeah that's fine because, maybe the next time you go to use your company's logo on something you'll be like wait, am I following the rules? And if it helps one person, do that, I will be happy let us know please call me and be like kaylee.

Kaylee: 56:11

I remember that one time on your podcast years ago when you said I can't stretch my logo. Yeah, I see it all the time yeah so hopefully it gets people thinking about it at least, that this is important and if you take one thing away from it is that branding and consistency is a big deal, and I will notice awesome.

Riley: 56:39

Well, thank you so much.

Kaylee: 56:42

Hopefully uh people got something out of it if not, they listened for a long time for no reason yeah, I mean, if you got to this point, you're like I'm still definitely reach out to us.

Riley: 56:54

Go to hardenedigitalcom, slash contact, dash us or just go to hardenedigitalcom and click contact at the top of the page. Kaylee will reach out to you. She will talk through just even discovery call of a looking at starting a business or looking to rebrand, or I need a new logo, whatever it may be. Reach out to us, um, hardened digitalcom, and we'd be happy to chat with you. So until next time uh, I dropped a teaser about the next. I'm going to say this is the at least second to last episode in the studio, because I have another podcast idea that I'm probably going to record right after this. So we'll catch you next time. Thanks again, kaylee, for joining us. Let's give her a round of applause. A lot of helpful information. So always appreciate coming on and sharing your knowledge. Always appreciate coming on and sharing your knowledge, and we will be back shortly, as in a week or two, for another episode of Digital Wrap-Up. Until then, take care you.