Agreement

In order to even speak about brand consistency, and reach meaningful and actionable results, we must first come to an agreement about what this means, and how we address it. 

Without such an agreement, any talk about the brand becomes rooted only in the subjective perceptions of individuals. Everyone can have an individual opinion about a brand, but a brand is first and foremost a collective thing, meant to represent a company consisting of many different stakeholders. These must all be in agreement about what the brand is, or at the very least how to talk about it.

Rules vs. Opinions

In order to reach an agreement about anything, we must have rules upon which such an agreement can be founded: what it is that we are trying to agree on, and what the scope of the agreement is. Without such rules, every discussion about the brand will be based on the perceptions and opinions of each individual, and there are no principles around which an agreement(or even a compromise) can be collectively reached. For instance, the brand does not need to reflect every single facet of the world – there are some areas that will be more important than others to define the brand. These areas need to be part of the overall brand strategy, and should be construed as contextual rules. 

For instance: 

• The company is engaged in a specific industry, so an appropriate rule could be that the brand reflects this industry in some respect. This can be articulated as a rule.
• The company is centered around producing business results for its stakeholders, so the brand can be defined to convey this as well. This can be articulated as a rule.
• The brand needs to be meaningful to a certain target audience. This can be articulated as a rule.

With the guidance of rules such as these, it is easier to steer the conversation towards meaningful outcomes. It does not matter if someone has a subjective preference for a certain color, for instance, if color in general, or that particular color, is not deemed meaningful in the context of the established rules. I.e. is a certain color more meaningful to the target audience than others? If not, then such a preference falls outside of the rules. Remember, we are trying to reach an agreement, and agreements between a multitude of people based on purely subjective things are virtually impossible. This is the reason why we first need to agree on the rules.

Implementation

In addition, brand stakeholders need to come to an agreement about the rules for how the brand is implemented. 

For instance:

• The brand needs to be given a visual identity. This can be articulated as a rule. (In fact, the visual identity is in itself a set of rules.)
• The visual identity is not useful to convey any of the things suggested above unless it is clearly recognizable, from one instance to the next. This can be articulated as a rule.
• For the brand to be recognizable, the visual identity has to stay consistent, or its recognizability is null and void. This can be articulated as a rule.
• For the brand to be applicable where needed, it needs to be given a usable form, i.e. produced as assets that can be replicated and applied in the relevant media, to ensure the recognizability and consistency described above. This can be articulated as a rule.

Exceptions

Any deviation from these rules, if agreed upon, must be framed as an exception, or the rules are not meaningful, and will become difficult to apply. Such exceptions should be kept to a minimum, and be justified in clearly articulated terms, or the effectiveness and clarity of the rules will deteriorate over time.

Elements of design

In order to have productive discussions with clear outcomes about rules such as these, as they pertain to design , we must define tangible aspects of design to which these rules can be applied, in a tactical sense. Otherwise, it will be impossible to frame the rules in the practical context of the design. For instance, a question might arise during the discussion about the visual expression of the brand: “What about the design does not say ’business results’ to you?”. Or: “What element of the brand’s expression needs to change for it to speak more compellingly to the intended audience?”. If the response to such  questions is not specific enough, designers will not be able to address the concern; the direction will be much too vague, and results will be unpredictable. 

For that reason, the design needs to be broken down into components that can be assessed separately, for instance:

• The wordmark and the symbol (if one exists), i.e. the logotype
• The typeface
• The colors
• The shapes
• The images (if any exist)
• The decor elements (if any exist)
• The composition and placement

We can assign more granular rules to each one of these design components, to be more specific and targeted in the modification of our designs. This ensures that it is clearer and easier for designers to preserve consistency, and produce designs that reliably visualize the brand in a recognizable fashion. It also means that critique can be applied with greater precision. For instance, rules can define: the proportions and placement of the logotype vs. the rest of a design; the application of type; the use of colors; what shapes are considered “on brand”; what role decor elements might play in the design; what types of compositions are allowing the brand to be consistently represented visually. Etc, etc. In general, the more exceptions to these rules that are allowed, the less consistent the visual identity will be.

Scalability

Without such rules, and without rules applied to tangible aspects of the design, execution comes down solely to the judgment and aesthetic sensibilities of individual designers. It can be very difficult to have multiple designers coalesce around specific design aesthetics if no overarching, guiding rules exist. Variations willarise. In such cases, it is almost inevitable that the execution of one individual designer becomes dominant, as a recognizable, preferred “look-and-feel”. This does not offer scalability, but produces an inevitable bottleneck, and it also does not produce the requisite clarity for the rest of the organization. The visual interpretation becomes the domain of a single individual, which is not meaningful, and poses a more challenging path for other designers to follow. A brand’s visual expression must be “democratized” and socialized, so that every person knows how to interpret and apply it, or brand erosion is inevitable. It is especially important that such rules are internalized by designers, who in essence are training the rest of the organization on the use of the visual identity, through the practice of their craft, and the consistent application of the agreed-upon rules.

Decisionmaking

In this perspective (and many others), leadership decisionmaking is key. If decisions appear to give room for too much subjectivity, and produce a lack of requisite clarity and consistency, this will create uncertainty around how to manage the brand, and result in cascading deviations from the intended brand perception.