In this episode, I discuss what should be included in your brand book, not just brand guidelines, once you’ve been through a branding exercise. There’s useful information in there too about how to position yourself to be more distinctive in your market.

• Many businesses I come across or who I interview on the podcast have, like me, just had designs created for them in the name of branding
• A comprehensive branding exercise should provide you with a strategy that is a central, unifying idea around which all behaviour, actions and communications of your company can be aligned
• Business success is much more about how effective you are in running your business than it is about your visual designs
• While I am still writing my brand book, I have learnt a huge amount from the exercise, which will inform the new book I will be releasing in 2021
• The strategic direction is hardly ever articulated verbally in a brand book by designers. Instead, you tend to get brand guidelines, which are essentially a style guide
• Having clarity around your positioning is key
• A comprehensive brand book would drill down into the language you would use, words you would or would not say even
• Your mission is all about what your company aims to do
• Strategy is something you use long term to inform your decisions
• My experience with brand guidelines is that is not always comprehensive enough in scope to guide others in all the different situations when the brand needs to be used in a consistent way

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