Sign Me Up: Creating Brand Standards—The Power of a Brand Book

Protecting the look, feel, and essence of an organization means maintaining brand standards. And to do that, a brand book is essential. Lisa Billings, National Account Manager for Kieffer Starlite, and Kelly David, Kieffer Starlite’s Branding and Signage Specialist, walked Hilary Kennedy through the process of developing and maintaining a brand book.

A significant part of David’s role at Kieffer Starlite is managing a brand book. “Brand books are the guiding foundation for any company,” David said. “They can be as comprehensive as you’d like them to be. It helps with your employees all the way to your external customers about how you want your brand to look in the marketplace, every interaction you have, and how you expect that brand to perform.”

While a brand book consists of all the particulars of representing a company’s look, from colors to fonts to logos, it also serves as an instruction guide for preparing things such as signage, something Kieffer Starlite creates all the time. “We specialize in the signage aspect of someone’s brand book, and we help them create specifications, or even sharpen up their specifications to ensure that brand is always the same for a customer no matter where they’re at,” David said.

And if a particular customer doesn’t have an existing brand book, Billings said Kieffer Starlite is there to help. “We can work with them,” Billings said. “What we need is their logo, in a vector format, and then any other branding they have, they can send that over to us. We can offer up some cost savings and some different ideas, so if they don’t have one, we can make one up from scratch.”