Graphic Design 101: Branding Basics And Why Consistency Matters

 

When creating the branding for a company or organization, it's extremely important to have a specific set of colors, fonts, and even layouts that have to be used for all of the company's published material, such as advertisements, photos and graphics posted to social media, and more.

This set of colors and fonts are part of an organization or company's branding guidelines, which are essentially a set of rules that everyone creating and/or publishing content on behalf of the company must abide by so that everything looks uniform and can be easily identified as part of that company's brand. When these rules are not followed or the selection of colors and fonts is poor, it can lead to designs that are extremely inconsistent and this can damage the ability of consumers, clients, and business partners to easily identify what company the image, advertisement, or other published work is for.

Here is an example of what happens when a company doesn't have clear branding guidelines and therefore can end up with confusing, mismatched imagery:

Image Credit: Pekin Insurance, Pekininsurance.com

As you can see when looking at these two images, they're both from the same company and are promoting the concept of working at the company. However the only part of either advertisement that denotes them as representing the same company is the inclusion of the company's logo. The inconsistencies you see here could easily confuse someone and make it difficult for them to realize that these are from the same company.

Now let's examine a good example of branding consistency in advertisements and imagery:

Image credit: Behance

Image credit: State Farm Newsroom

Here you can see exactly how consistent the branding of State Farm is between even two extremely different advertisements. The key to their success in this area is their constant use of their signature red color as the primary color used in their images and illustrations. Even without seeing their logo, someone familiar with State Farm would likely be able to guess who these advertisements and images were from. Additionally, the recognizability of their advertisements and media is helped significantly by the fact that they have a primary spokesperson known as "Jake from State Farm" pictured above. He is used in all of their commercials and advertisements using real people and as a result has become an extremely recognizable and identifiable part of State Farm and their brand.

Hopefully this helps you understand the importance of identifying specific colors, fonts, and other forms of representation when creating and using the branding guidelines for a company or organization!