Designers are typically pretty cool people.
They usually look something like this:
Some very lush facial hair. Black rimmed glasses. Trendy haircut. Sipping on the latest craft beer.
Unfortunately, unlike their fashion sense, their super powers don’t extend to mind reading.
Instead, prior to starting on any big project such as a new website redesign they need to be provided a solid lay of the land.
Below is an actual internal monologue extracted from designers brain just yesterday:
“Oh man, I could really go that fourth coffee…….hmmmm, coffee”
“Mitch you caffeine riddled addict. You are buzzed enough. You got work to do”
“Fourth Coffee later. Design now. Client and account manager are chasing you”
“OK. New project. What do I have to work with? Checking Dropbox now.”
“Hmmmm. Solid well designed logo – check”
“Fully Sick. A style guide outlining all the rules on how the logo can and can’t be used”
“OMG – even better. Brochures outlining what their current marketing material actually looks like – check!”
“Wait for it. Last but not least. Ohhhhh yeah – Jackpot. You little ripper. Full access to their quality photo library”
“Today is a good day Mitch. I can work with this.”
“This calls for a celebratory coffee”
<10 minutes later, Mitch has a fifth coffee in his hot little hand>
“OK – attaching headphones and cranking Spotify playlist. This calls for some trip hop beats to get the creativity flowing. I am going deep into design land. See you in 8 hours suckers.”
If Mitch’s internal monologue ramblings made zero sense, here is a consolidated of visual assets that really help a designer when they are working on your site:
1. Vector version of your logo (EPS / PDF / AI file format) including:
- The different variations (e.g. landscape / stacked)
- Colour & monotone variants
2. Style guide document outlining how the brand should be used (refer below)
3. Other supporting marketing materials such as:
- Brochures
- Advertisements
- Business cards / letterheads / other stationary
4. Access to a range quality photography including:
- Headshots
- Team shots
- Lifestyle shots
- Both portrait & landscape variations are really helpful supplied in a medium resolution JPG format
What does a style guide look like?
One of the most essential marketing documents your business can own is a brand style guide. It sets the tone for how the brand should be used from a visual design perspective.
This is very helpful especially when there are multiple suppliers doing creative work. Ensuring they are all singing from the same hymn book and creating visual consistency.
A style guide will typically define:
- Logo size and placement
- Font’s to be used
- Colour palette (CMYK / RGB / Hex Values)
- Any percentage variations on colours & gradients (if used)
- What NOT to do with the logo (common mistakes)Examples of the brand in real life (e.g. on a T-shirt / coffee mug / letterhead etc.)
Here is our style guide for you to peruse:
Here is another example:
