Does graphic manuals are out of fashion?
By this days I found myself working for a client who decided to trust in my advice for getting ahead with the core concepts and values of their brand. Therefore I started to evaluate the function of two important documents for a visual management of a brand: (1) Brand Equity Manual and (2) Graphic Style Manual.
The first one its fundamental to “get on a paper” the core concepts and ideas that will lead to establish the correct position of the brand into customers minds. Also we have to say that it has the power to clearify which will be the main idea for a communication strategy.
The second one, object of this post, leads me to doubt about its functionality and the rigidness it has to follow in order to achieve the correct message whitin visual and graphic elements during a communication action.
While searching on the Web, I found a disscusion related to this topic, which begins with a questio with equal meaning to the title of this post. The author of that website is Edward Tufte an expert in visual theory, where I recommend you to look for the Corporate Design Manuals section.
I would like to extract the following from the website cited above:
- - The consistency on design generates value and equity for the brand
- - Into big corporations, it is hard to keep one graphic style… graphic design under this case shouldn’t be democrathic
- - If you accomplish a standard for your corporate design, keep it and do not loose it