Many companies use a corporate identity manual among internal documents. This book, more or less extensive, is important to maintain a straight corporate identity, without variations that may affect customers.
But What is a corporate identity manual? What benefits does it offer you? How do you make one? If you want to know everything about this document, you just have to take a look at the guide that we have prepared for you.
What is a corporate identity manual
The first thing you need to know is what the term corporate identity manual refers to. In this case, we are talking about a business document that establishes the rules and guidelines to be followed in the company to offer and maintain a visual identity to customers as well as workers.
In other words, what it does is establish the essence of how the graphic elements of the brand will be and how to apply them, both online and offline. Elements such as the type of logo, colors, fonts ...
These manuals can be very basic, especially for small businesses, or large extensive manuals in large companies. And who uses them? Well, companies such as Vodafone, Endesa, Adidas ... They establish the guidelines to follow, not only with logos, but in many other elements such as advertisements in the media, products, catalogs, stationery, television advertisements, social networks, decoration of shops, etc.
Corporate identity manual vs brand manual
Have you ever thought that the corporate identity manual and the brand manual are the same? For sure YES. But the reality is quite different.
Both things seem to be about the same thing, but they are not. While the corporate identity manual is focused on the graphic part of the brand, the visual identity of that brand, the brand manual does not remain only at the «base», but goes much deeper, even reflecting aspects that cannot be "touched" such as corporate values, tone of voice, way of communicating with potential clients, and so on.
So, when it comes to building one document and another, although they can go hand in hand, the corporate identity manual really remains only on the basis of what the brand name.
Services
Not many companies have a corporate identity manual and, nevertheless, the existence of one, as well as the use of it, has many benefits that, perhaps, you have not realized. We summarize them:
You will save time and resources with the corporate identity manual
Imagine that you hire a person. You give her a tour of the company and tell her everything she needs to know about corporate identity… That takes time, and also the person who teaches her everything cannot work during the time she visits this worker.
But what if a new worker arrived the following week? You would again waste several hours of your time, and with it resources that you could be using for other things.
A corporate identity manual allows you to waste less time, give just a brief presentation and write down the information you need to do your job properly for the company.
You have greater consistency
Often, especially with the passage of time, people tend to forget the rules that were followed at the beginning. It is as if we gave a wide sleeve to certain aspects, and that, in the end, takes its toll on the company.
Therefore, to avoid it, having the rules and communications through a corporate identity manual helps not to forget them and to have an equitable "yardstick" for all.
You give a better image to customers
Because by having a corporate identity manual you are telling clients that you care because there is a smooth running of the business and that you communicate with your workers so that they are aware of everything they need to know about the company.
How to create a corporate identity manual
Focusing on how you should make a corporate identity manual, the first thing you should be clear about is the type of information you will need to prepare it.
In this case, it must be defined, because we talk about elements that should not change every so often (since what it is about is that customers associate the brand, do not change them every two by three):
- Logo.
- Color palette.
- Typographies.
- Icons and symbols.
- Image Bank.
- Additional features.
- Applications.
All of this is basic in a corporate identity manual, but what about the structure? We break it down for you.
The structure of the corporate identity manual
This document must follow an order so that all the information is well understood and there are no doubts or problems when applying it in the works or in any application that is carried out (television, press, billboards, etc.).
The structure would be the following:
Introduction of the corporate identity manual
In which it talks about the philosophy, values, personality and tone of the brand that it has. It is important to make this section clear as it is the basis for understanding the reason for everything else.
Logo
The logo is a fundamental part of the graphic identity of the brand. For this reason, the design, colors and uses.
Some aspects that must be reflected are, for example, the space that must be left around the logo so that it does not look too loaded, or the maximum and minimum of the logo without making it stop reading or look too blurry.
Also here there may be a section for variations of the logo, in order to see how it would look with different colors, formats, etc.
Colours
Although we have mentioned before that the colors are already covered in the logo, in this case it delves into the colors, specifically the color values, which can be established between three: RGB, CMYK, HEX or Pantone (the latter is the most used because it allows the color that is used to be the one that is actually printed, in the same tonality).
Composition:
The composition section establishes the basic rules that the design must have so that it is in line with what you want to achieve visually from the brand.
Icons
In addition to the logo, the icons and other elements are important, and should follow the style of the logo as a whole. So here aspects as different as size are specified of these, the colors that they will have when they are not pressed and when they are pressed, if they will have sound or not, if the text they have will change, etc.
Images
In this case we talk about Image bank that the company will have on the brand itself. They can be photographs but also illustrations, drawings ... All of them must be of high quality and treated appropriately to enhance the vision of the brand.
Typography
Finally, we have the typography, that is, the type of font to be used in the branding. Here, important aspects such as font size, type of spacing, whether dark and / or light backgrounds are to be used, whether there will be headings (H1, H2, H3 ...) and paragraphs or only paragraph, etc. have to be detailed here.
If the company is large, in addition to these points in the corporate identity manual, other specific ones are included for each of the applications that have: for press media, magazines, web advertisements, television, social networks, etc.
Is it clearer to you now what the corporate identity manual is?