Tag: branding

Email Design

Are your brand guidelines throttling your creativity?

2 minute read
Adrian Young Adrian Young

Colours. Tone of voice. Typographical style. Logo dos and don’ts. A brand’s identity is a complex, multifaceted thing. Brand guidelines play an essential role in keeping this distinct character in check.

Just don’t take them too seriously.

Creative straitjacket

It’s no secret that consistent branding is important. Consistency fosters familiarity. Your customers – and potential customers – come to know and instantly recognise your brand.

It’s easy however to get carried away when putting down the rules in black and white (or whatever your colour scheme may be). Brand guidelines should serve as a helpful design aid, not an iron fist that stifles creativity. The clue is in the name: guidelines. Not laws.

Absurdity in detail

I’m a big fan of documentation in general. And the more detail, the better. Usually.

Some of the finer details in brand guidelines however tend to verge on absurdity. Do people really care or even notice that an apostrophe is curly rather than straight? And while it could be argued that our brains are subconsciously aware of these subtle details, my gut tells me that it’s overkill. Focus that energy on quality content instead.

Content blindness

There are consequences to restrictive brand guidelines. Thinking specifically about email marketing, it’s common to see the same design wheeled out time and time again. And that includes recurring content blocks. Regular readers may start to experience ‘content blindness’ as a result.

We have one particular client that is not afraid to break free and design a little more liberally. They were the inspiration for this article in fact. Each of their email’s ‘hero’ images is unique. The typography is varied. In short: their emails are fun to receive, and the variety keeps people coming back for more. But crucially these designs are still on-brand. There is a balance to be struck.

Flexibility is key

The solution isn’t scant detail or oversimplification in a company’s brand guidelines. After all, a creative free-for-all defeats the purpose.

The key is to build flexibility into the rules. The aim is to keep your publications on-brand while giving your designers and marketers room to breathe. Let your creative minds be creative.

Don’t forget about accessibility

In this day and age, no brand big or small should be overlooking accessibility. But I regularly see examples where brand guidelines are favoured over accessible design. Tiny fonts are your thing? Too bad for people with visual impairment.

Adaptability is part of flexibility, and a company’s design choices need to change with the times.

Shake it up

There’s a handy side effect to having an established brand. When you have an important announcement to make, a one-off change of style tells your readers: this is something special. Used sparingly, this can make for some powerful marketing.

Less dramatically, it’s also worth thinking about a template redesign from time to time. Even the best designs become stale after a while. A new look keeps your marketing fresh and engaging.

Here’s to creativity

We live in the age of AI-generated slop. AI-generated imagery now appears regularly in YouTube videos, LinkedIn posts, and the internet in general. Amazingly, spelling mistakes and surreal glitches that could be fixed in Photoshop are left uncorrected. Lazy content like this does not deserve your attention.

True human creativity on the other hand, is something to be celebrated. Let it flourish within your brand and the results will speak for themselves.

Email Design

It’s just a [colour] theory

3 minute read
Adrian Young Adrian Young

Do you work in marketing? Then there’s a good chance you’ll have seen a colour theory chart like this one:

Colour theory chart

There are a few variations kicking about, and they can often be found doing the rounds on LinkedIn. These charts all follow much the same pattern: emotions are grouped by colours, and an assortment of brand logos are cherry-picked as examples.

The trouble is that it doesn’t take much scrutiny to spot weaknesses in the logic or think of contradictions. Ferrari with its yellow logo is in the optimism and warmth group, but I doubt anyone would argue against exciting and bold as better descriptors. Even their cars are rosso corsa. Or what about BBC News? It does have a red logo, and yet would seem more at home in the blue sector of emotions.

So, it’s easy to poke holes in this. Does that mean that colour theory (in marketing) is all wrong?

The age of oversimplification

The answer is no. It’s not all wrong. Things are rarely so black and white.

But we’ve inadvertently highlighted the problem. Social media is the land of brevity and bite-sized absolutes. Content candy is addictive, and reality is inconveniently complex. On an algorithm-driven platform like LinkedIn, engagement is valued above education.

Armchair psychology

On the topic of education: professional psychology is a field that demands years of study. I can’t claim to know the precise stats, but I’m willing to bet that ninety-nine point something percent of marketers are not qualified psychologists. Marketing techniques like split testing can certainly yield insight into customer behaviour but I would hesitate before labeling Monday’s A/B test as a psychological study.

Colour psychology is a subject that can fill a 764-page, professor-authored book. Is it possible to condense such an expansive topic into a meme-sized infographic?

Hue are you?

Let’s go back to a design and marketing perspective on this. Colour is certainly an intrinsic element of branding. It’s often a simple way to differentiate competing brands within a particular sector at a glance.

Back in the day, the big three UK mobile networks were Orange, O2 and Vodafone. The orange one, the blue one and the red one. I can’t say I ever thought of them as the friendly one, the dependable one and the passionate one.

The scope of these colours extends beyond the logos. Their websites and marketing in general predominately feature each colour. It’s colour-coded brand recognition.

A visual key change

Brands can capitalise on this colour familiarity. If there’s an important announcement to be made – perhaps a product launch or an off-topic statement – a one-off change of palette can be an effective attention-grabber.

Context is everything

Colour associations vary depending on context. A blue sky is positive, but feeling blue is not. Green can signify safety, but you wouldn’t want to be green around the gills.

Likewise, the colour of a brand’s logo or a piece of advertising is just one factor in the overall mood. An important one, of course, but one that contributes alongside typography and shape and imagery and tone of voice.

True colours

There is certainly an element of truth to these simple colour charts, but design is a broad, complex topic. It deserves better insight than like-farming posts for social media. The real world is far more colourful.