How to get brand consistency right
This is one of those topics that looks small until it costs you something. The short answer to brand consistency is that it is mostly a sequence of small decisions, not one big one.
The measurable part of design is whether people can find what they came for and act on it without hesitating. The practical test is whether someone new to the project could tell, in a minute, that it had been handled.
What it costs to ignore
Consistency is what makes a small company look established. Where this goes wrong is almost never a lack of knowledge. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.
The steps
- Establish what you have today before changing anything
- Document the rules or they drift within a quarter
- Consistency is not sameness, it is predictability
- Write down the decision so the next person does not re-litigate it
Consistency is not sameness, it is predictability. Small and consistent beats large and occasional here. Write the reasoning down alongside the decision, because the reasoning is what changes first.
Where to go from here
What this looks like day to day
Consistency is the quiet half of design work: it rarely gets complimented, and its absence is noticed immediately. Three things worth confirming about brand consistency before you move on:
- Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
- Document the rules or they drift within a quarter — and you know whether that is true here
- There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped
If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.