Brand equity. It’s a bit more than face paint and wacky mascots. Brand equity is that intangible, but always valuable, essence brands build over time through consistent messaging, design, and experiences. For colleges and universities, it is impossible to overstate the importance of brand equity within today’s hyper-competitive academic landscape. Branding plays an essential role in maintaining positive reputations, attracting students and faculty, and highlighting unique identities. It keeps you looking good.
Brand standards guides are comprehensive documents that outline the visual and verbal elements of a brand.
Mad Genius believes that creating and updating comprehensive brand standard guides offers a powerful means for colleges to safeguard their brand equity and reach target demographics. Let’s discuss what brand standards guides are, their key elements, and how they protect and strengthen your college’s brand.
What Is a Brand Standards Guide? A How-To Manual for Your Brand Identity
Brand standards guides are comprehensive documents that outline the visual and verbal elements of a brand. They provide guidelines on how those elements should and, sometimes more importantly, should not be used consistently across all communication channels and platforms.
In the context of colleges, brand standards guides establish a set of rules and recommendations for maintaining a consistent and cohesive brand identity across everything from merchandising to email signatures and letterhead.
These guides serve as a reference tool for anyone involved in representing the college’s brand, including:
- Marketing and communication teams
- Designers
- Faculty
- Staff
- External partners
Brand standards guides ensure that everyone understands and follows the established guidelines to create a unified and recognizable brand presence.
Accomplishing this requires an exhaustive guide of the kind Mad Genius created for Itawamba Community College (ICC). As we explain the elements of a brand standards guide, we’ll provide some examples from the one we created for ICC.
Logos: Your College’s Visual Calling Card
A sticker on a car window to support the team. A pin on the lapel of someone’s business attire. Letterhead on a grant proposal to fund cancer research. Logos are the visual representation of a college’s brand identity and serve as a powerful symbol that students, alumni, and the public associate with the institution.
Many people take pride in their school logo and all that it stands for. With brand standards guides, colleges and universities can ensure their supporters and partners have access to up-to-date logos, so they can share their pride with confidence and accuracy.
In an easy-to-follow format, our ICC book describes proper usage, variations, and restrictions related to logos, as well as guidelines for size, placement, clear space, and minimum dimensions.
These guidelines ensure consistent and impactful representation across all platforms and help colleges prevent the misuse or distortion of logos. Doing so keeps logos instantly recognizable and protects brand integrity.
Colors: The Emotional Heart of your Brand
Colors aren’t just for that aforementioned face paint (though, people who apply Pantone-accurate masks should be applauded). They play a significant role in creating an emotional connection with your audience and evoking powerful feelings. Case in point: an alumnus from your institution or a diehard fan of your team knows the exact shade of red or blue or orange in your logo or lettering. Those colors mean something profound to them, something difficult to put into words—and they know when they’re not right.
A Mad Genius brand standards guide establishes a primary color palette that reflects your college’s values and identity. It specifies the exact values (Pantone, RGB, CMYK, or hexadecimal) of each color, ensuring consistency across various media. Additionally, the guide provides information on secondary colors, accent colors, and appropriate color combinations. By adhering to the defined color palette, colleges can create a visually harmonious brand presence that reinforces brand recognition and differentiation.
Typography: Text-Based Personality
Like colors, a college’s typography offers a shortcut to instant brand recognition by enhancing brand identity and reinforcing brand personality. A Mad Genius brand standards guide specifies the primary typefaces to be used for:
- Headings
- Subheadings
- Body text
- Pull quotes
- Captions
- Any other relevant typographic elements
It also provides font sizes, line heights, and letter spacing to ensure consistency in typography across different communication channels. Finally, the guide provides guidelines for appropriate font pairings to maintain visual harmony and readability.
Protecting and Enhancing Your Brand Equity
Consistent typography, when paired with correct logos and accurate colors, builds a cohesive brand experience that sets your college apart from the other players in a crowded field. That’s where we come in. A Mad Genius brand standards guide helps you easily define and enforce guidelines for logos, colors, and typography (and more, when necessary). These guides ensure consistency across all brand touchpoints, reinforce recognition, and foster trust among stakeholders. When all parties involved in representing your college’s brand adhere to these guidelines, the institution benefits from a unified and powerful brand presence.
Talk to a Genius About Your Brand Standards
Partnering with Mad Genius to develop and implement a brand standards guide can prove an essential step to protecting and enhancing your college’s brand equity. It’s also really fun. And remember, protecting brand equity is an ongoing process. Regularly reviewing and updating your brand standards guides to adapt to evolving trends and technologies will help your college stay relevant and maintain a strong brand identity.
If you have additional questions about your brand standards, join us for a free 30-minute Q&A with a genius that can help get you started.