A recipe for success. If you’re planning a rebrand, think hard about your brand guidelines. They’re the key to consistency for your new brand. But do you want a set of rules? Or would a “recipe” be better?

A rebranding project will give you lots of new “tools”: a logo, colours, photos, strapline… It’s an exciting time, when the project is complete. But it can be confusing, understanding how each element works together.

In this situation, a set of brand guidelines are crucial. They help everyone understand how to use these new tools. But what kind of guidelines do you need? A strict set of “rules”? Or a more flexible “recipe” approach?

It’s like cooking your favourite dish. If you’re making a chicken korma, you know you need chicken, onion, garlic, some cumin and coriander. Those are the “rules”. But how much, that’s for you to decide. You can tailor it to your preference.

It’s this bit of flexibility that keeps things interesting, over time. If things are too strict and rigid, people will get soon get bored of the new dish. It will become boring and a bit predictable. Not very exciting or memorable.

It’s the same with brand guidelines. You need consistency. But it’s important to allow some flexibility, in the right places, to keep things fresh.

So when you’re preparing your brand guidelines, think about how you would like people to use them. Rules? Or recipe?

If you want some advice on how to create brand guidelines, we’ve published a guide: How to rebrand your business, in 10 steps.

It describes the ten steps you need to follow, if you want to rebrand your business. Creating your brand guidelines and setting some rules is step 8. This is a process we have led many clients through in the past, so we know it works. You can find it here.