Corporate identity manual: Structure and advice (I)

In previous articles we mentioned the importance of corporate identity manual and we gave the recommendation to include said manual as an annex to the work that we develop for companies that require our services.

There are a number of aspects that you should take into account. Our manual will require a few specs and some essential ingredients for it to be effective. Some of them are the following:

1. A skeleton must be built or structure to organize our information and this should be as accessible and neat as possible.
2. The official character of it should be highlighted and the obligation to comply with each of the established and specified standards.
3. We are talking about a private document. This is one of the specifications that should be clearly stated. The tenure regime must be restricted to the internal professional team of the company in question. Of course, it cannot be published in any media, much less be provided to any other company, especially if it is a company in the same sector.
4. The design of our manual is as important as the design of the logo and the image in question. As it is another element of the visual identity of our company, it must present an aspect in tune with it. This means that the corporate colors and fonts must be similar to those that appear in the image of our company.

The manual will consist of at least the following sections and each of them will be analyzed in a much more in-depth way in successive articles. For the moment I leave you the structure it should have:

Index: It is essential as it will help the reader to locate the information they are looking for in a fast and agile way.

Instructions: Depending on the level of complexity of our document and the way in which we organize the sections, this section will be more or less important.

The brand: A section should be created to recall and underline the philosophy and values ​​that drive the business, the origins, the presentation of the company and even the identity of the founders.

Brand construction: A rigorous analysis will be made of the construction of each of the elements that make up the visual identity of the company. From fonts, logos, corporate resources catalog, prohibited practices ...

Brand applications: In this section we will reflect the identity of our brand in the possible supports.