Got handed a brand book at a client meeting in Portland and it was a complete mess

Last month I sat in on a branding session with a small coffee chain near Burnside. Their brand guidelines were 80 pages of random fonts and hex codes with zero rules on how to actually use them. Has anyone else dealt with a brand book that looked pretty but fell apart the second you tried to apply it?

2 comments

2 Comments

leep897d ago

I worked on a 120-page brand guide for a Portland restaurant group a few years back, and honestly, I think the mess is kind of the point sometimes. Brand books that are too rigid can kill the creative vibe that makes small local places interesting, you know? If that coffee chain's guidelines just list fonts and hex codes without context, maybe they're giving designers room to actually use their judgment on the fly. A lot of bigger agencies overcorrect with strict rules that end up making everything look like a cookie-cutter franchise, which feels worse to me.

kevin2187d ago

I remember reading a piece from a design blog that talked about how Starbucks went through this phase where their brand guidelines were super loose in the early days and it actually helped local baristas add personality to the shops. The problem comes when the guidelines are so vague that nobody knows what the core identity is supposed to be. There's a sweet spot between giving people freedom and having a complete free-for-all where the brand just looks sloppy and inconsistent.