Achieving Consistency In Your Corporate Branding

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When people hear the term corporate branding they usually think of their brand being printed on materials, such as business cards, brochures and flyers. While print media is a popular way to get your brand recognized it is equally important to make sure that your web site reflects the same message and level of professionalism that your print materials do.

Depending on how much time you have spent thinking about your corporate branding you might only have rules in place for how your branding is portrayed on a print medium. It is a good idea to think about how you want your business represented in an electronic format as well. This will answer questions for designers/developers who are creating your email signature, CD-ROM materials and/or your web site.

While you may think that any graphics business can translate your corporate brand into print or web without difficulties you should know that graphic designers and web designers have different skills sets that are specific to the medium that they know best. The print and web world work very differently and this is why it is recommended that you have a graphic designer create all your print materials and have a web designer translate your branding efforts online.

As an example, a printed tri-fold brochure can be difficult to convert directly into a web site format due to the fact that they work on different mediums - paper versus a computer screen. Having graphics and web professionals that take care of your print and web needs is key to the success of portraying your business message effectively across both mediums.

The differences in media apply to colour as well. The official colours that you use for your print materials might not translate perfectly into web colours. While going through your branding experience, it is ideal to know your print colours such as CMYK(Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) as well as Pantone Matching System (PMS) code(s). These colour types will help your graphic designer create print materials in your proper corporate colours.

Your web designer/developer is looking for RGB (Red, Green, Blue) colours that either match or closely match your print colours. If you want the colours on your website to be fully web-safe, your corporate colours might shift a little to accommodate for screens that display a lesser colour palette. This is quite common when developing a corporate brand that spans the print and web mediums.

Being specific about your online branding guidelines will help you avoid the trap that some businesses fall into. The age of web sites brought along with it the ability to do "neat" things on a web site to grab your audience's attention. Over time these "neat" effects, such as blinking texts, cute animations and even web site counters, have taken their toll on the web audience at large and can affect your web site negatively. Just because you CAN have an eye catching effect does not mean you SHOULD. If you have your branding guidelines in place for the web you will be able to make sounder decisions when it comes to adding the bells and whistles that you incorporate into your web site.

If there is one thing that you take away from this article it should be to understand that your corporate branding needs to be implemented clearly throughout all mediums of advertising, whether that is through print, web or other means, in order to portray your business message effectively. Reaching this level of professionalism is only achieved by recognizing that there are specialists in every advertising field who know the importance of your branding initiative and can apply it appropriately in order to keep your business brand intact.