How can you achieve brand consistency without spending on a brand guide?
If the investment feels out of reach, there’s another way.
In my work with nonprofits, I often encounter misgivings from executive and communication leaders about the value of investing in a brand guide. People find it hard to justify a line item that they don’t completely understand, and I get it. The price tag can feel like an uncertain investment when you’re balancing other priorities like mission advancement, service delivery, and the million other things that small teams have to consider. When you think of a brand guide as an expensive PDF, I agree, it doesn’t make sense.
But the PDF isn’t actually the thing you’re buying when you pay for a brand guide–
you’re buying the work that goes into it.
When a professional designer creates a brand guide, they’re doing more than documenting rules and standards, they’re actually developing those things– testing color combinations and fonts for accessibility, considering logo functionality, exploring design systems until they create something with the right balance of flexibility and consistency that can enable your brand to show up online the same way it does in print, or in time-based media.
The brand guide is evidence of that work, but the work itself is the thing that is valuable.
This insight leads to an interesting train of thought for nonprofit communications teams.
If the valuable part of a brand guide is the work that goes into developing the contents
And that work can be distilled to: intentionally improving communication
And that is also the daily work of a nonprofit communications team
Then you’re already doing the work, so start documenting it!
You're already making hundreds of communication decisions on a daily basis. Instead of letting those decisions disappear, you can use what I like to call the Scrapbook Approach to Brand Guides to capture and organize the best ones. It doesn’t require a huge amount of time or effort beyond what you’re already putting in (because if you work in nonprofit communications we already know that’s a LOT of time and effort).
The idea is to approach your brand guide as a scrapbook, adding snapshots and inspiration piece by piece as you go about your daily work. Create a deck in Google Slides (or your preferred presentation software) and let it become your scrapbook.
Depending on what you put into it, it can act as a laboratory for visual experiments, a memory album to document progress and evolution, a reflecting pool to help recognize patterns, or a vision board to compile inspiration. What all of those things add up to is an investment of time spent thinking about your visual communication, and making that thinking visible so that others can be informed by it.
The Scrapbook Approach may not create a document that can replace a professionally-designed brand guide, but it is a low-cost alternative for organizations that can’t afford one. If a brand guide is on your roadmap (and I think it should be!) then the Scrapbook Approach can act as a stepping stone until you get there.
So how should you get started?
And how does this extra work fit into your already challenging workload?
The challenge in the Scrapbook Approach is finding time to do it. Fortunately, this process is specifically designed to happen in small increments. Everyone has a few moments that open up unexpectedly during the day, and if you build habits around using that time you’ll be surprised with what you can accomplish with just a couple minutes at a time. These are a few suggestions of habits to build with your spare moments.
If you have five minutes:
Make a habit of scrolling through Pinterest or Behance and start downloading design pieces that resonate with you. Drop them into your scrapbook, in a “swipe” section you can reference the next time you’re starting a layout or project.
If you have ten minutes:
Take some time to view your work through someone else’s eyes. Revisit old communication pieces and see which ones feel most trustworthy or clear. Try to identify what is different about those pieces. Take screenshots and drop them into your scrabook to reference the next time you need to design outreach materials.
If you have 30 minutes:
Scroll through your organization’s social feeds and screenshot the posts with the most engagement. Drop them onto a slide and start thinking about what they have in common visually.
If you have 45 minutes:
Look at communication materials from other organizations or companies providing the same services as you. Spend the first 30 reviewing materials from one organization, taking screenshots. Then spend the last 15 creating a slide in your scrapbook with what you have learned. By looking at your “contextual landscape” you may identify opportunities to stand out. Now you can make internal design rules to leverage those opportunities.
If you have an hour every week:
Let’s chat! I’m developing some class offerings to help nonprofit communication teams go through the same steps that I take as an agency to understand and strengthen your brand. If you’re interested in being part of my first cohort, please get in touch!
Investing Money vs Time
There are absolutely benefits to working with a professional to create your organization’s brand guide, and it will always be my top recommendation. But there’s a middle ground between having something created by an expert and having nothing at all. Small, consistent work toward documenting communication decisions can help you build toward the shared foundation that helps organizations scale. Investing in a brand guide typically represents a financial investment, while the Scrapbook Approach represents an investment in time. No matter which approach you choose, you won’t regret it.