It is incredibly easy, in a small organization, to forego a brand style guide. The documentation of an entire brand system can seem unnecessary, especially if there’s establish in-house design capabilities. I should know. I worked largely without that net for a decade plus at the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival.
That is an easy mistake to make. When you’re running and gunning, and you’ve got the knowledge of the brand right there in somebody’s head, the time it takes to document things seems expendable. But it’s still a mistake.
I had initially streamlined the branding for AJFF back in 2010, for its tenth anniversary. That involved the usual: building color palettes, defining rules for typography, and rebuilding the central logo mark:
Originally, AJFF had a word-heavy, traditional seal. I took it apart, deconstructing its constituent parts. The words fell out of the icon, allowing the directors chair and Star of David to grow in prominence. That helped enormously with the scalability, and by flattening everything, I was able to introduce more flexibility in color usage.
A Brand Without a Brand Style Guide
I did create a basic style guide. It was revised, lightly, through the years. But time and resources were tight, and I was always around to give live, interactive feedback (or do the design myself). I always wanted to build out a more complete brand bible, but other priorities won out.
By 2022, that had to change. The team had quadrupled in size, and I knew I wasn’t going to be there forever. Of course, there’s more to a brand style guide than mere documentation. The exercise of thinking through, and committing to the page (or screen), the rules of the road will provide a deeper understanding of how the various assets should work together.
A Brand Style Guide At Last
The result was an 87-slide deck that broke down everything from the basic dimensions of the logo mark to the color palette and rules for grammar and voice. It also included sections on grid systems, shapes and assets lifted from the logo mark, and a ticket stub inspired asset for the logo to sit inside.
The goal was to preserve a maximum of options, while retaining consistency in the visual branding. The annual festival reinvents itself every year, with a new key art and campaign concept, but the organization still has to remain clear and present. I wanted a brand that would bend, but not break.
Color palettes were streamlined. I reduced what had been a range of shades within four primary colors to a primary trio of blues and gold. A narrower selection of supplemental colors rounded things out in specific use cases. I crafted a whole section on the voice of the festival, something that had been long overdue.
Aligning Grids and Type
The grid system is a good example of that. Rather than set a fixed, limited grid for various collateral, I instead employed a 12-column base grid. This allows it to be broken into multiples of two, three, or four (or various combinations thereof). I’d learned the value of this approach over the years, designing the festivals program guide.
That publication overflowed with information. Grids were essential. The visual schedule was a particular challenge, one solved only by a four-quadrant, modular grid rooted in this 12-column style.
This also aligned printed collateral to the same underlying structure as the AJFF.org website, which I’d overseen a redesign of a year earlier. Much credit goes to designer Jonny May and the developers at Cool Blue Interactive, who I worked closely with.
Making sure print and digital were in sync was another major goal of the 2022 brand revision. To that end, I ditched the Trade Gothic (and later Gibson) typefaces that had been used for AJFF copy elements. In their place, I selected display and body types from the Google Fonts library: Heebo and Bitter. This ensured it would be easy to match type, regardless of the medium.
That is ultimately the goal of any brand style guide: consistency. In an increasingly digital landscape, its important to remember, especially for an in-person event like AJFF, that print hasn’t vanished. Thinking of both at the same time is critical to a good brand.