Brand guidelines and branded merchandise: applying your visual identity to products

Complete brand guidelines generally contain the logo and its variants, the reference colours, the typefaces and a few usage rules. Open them before choosing a single product: you will often find the Pantone references of your colours, essential for marking, and sometimes a version designed for small formats.

What is almost always missing are the rules specific to products. Guidelines explain how to place the logo on a white page, rarely how to apply it to a dark textile or a curved surface. Rather than improvising product by product, write a short “products” appendix: which version of the logo for which size of area, which marking colours are allowed, which product colours are accepted. One page is enough. It will be used for every new order and by everyone who orders on your behalf.

Most identities are based on a full logo: a symbol, a name, sometimes a tagline. On a product, this full version does not always work. Plan three variants and assign each its territory:

• The primary logo, complete, for large areas: a tote bag, the back of a sweatshirt, the lid of a box.
• The secondary logo, reduced to the symbol or the name alone, for narrow or compact areas: the barrel of a pen, a keyring, a USB stick.
• The one-colour version, in a single solid colour, for processes that lay down one shade at a time and for laser engraving, which applies no colour and marks the material directly.

The one-colour version deserves particular attention. It is not just a matter of turning the logo black: gradients, shadows and overlapping shades must be redrawn as solid colours, otherwise they disappear or turn into blotches. Also check that a reversed version, light on a dark background, exists and remains legible. All these variants must be supplied as vector files, with text converted to outlines: our guide to the vector file explains why.

Clear space is the empty area the guidelines require around the logo, so that no other element interferes with it. On a product, it takes on a very concrete meaning: it is the distance between your logo and the edge of the marking area, a seam, a hinge or another text.

Two mistakes come up often. The first is to enlarge the logo to the limits of the template, which visually squashes it and makes the slightest positioning deviation visible. The second is to add a website address, a slogan and a pictogram to the same area, until the surface is saturated. Respect the margin set by your guidelines, even if it means choosing a more modest size; the guide to logo size details the method.

On a promotional product, two colours meet: that of the ink or thread, and that of the material. The guidelines only control the first. The second depends on the colours available for each product, and it is often what decides the result. A few principles to stay in control:

• Provide your Pantone references from the Solid Coated range, those ending in a “C”. It is the physical reference that makes it possible to get the same blue on a notebook and on an umbrella. If you only have a HEX or CMYK code, our FAQ explains how to find the closest reference.
• Choose the colour of the product before the colour of the marking, not the other way round. A logo in your main colour can disappear on a material of a similar shade; the white or light one-colour version then becomes the right answer.
• Accept that some processes do not use your colours. Engraving on metal or wood takes on the shade of the material, and that is perfectly fine: consistency then comes from the shape of the logo, not its colour.

Consistency is not judged on an isolated product, but on everything your clients and teams receive over the year. A navy notebook, a white water bottle, a red cap and an off-white tote bag, each marked differently, do not tell the story of the same company.

To build a range, first set a limited palette of products: two or three material colours that go with your colours, and one marking rule per colour. Then keep the same logo position from one product to another when possible, for example always centred, or always bottom right. Finally, alternate processes methodically: tone-on-tone embroidery on textiles, engraving on metal products, printing in your main colour on paper. Diversity of materials does not harm unity if the logic remains clear. To bring several harmonised items together in a single step, the Create my pack tool lets you put them together.

The proof is the last moment to check that the product respects your brand guidelines. It is generated at actual scale in the configurator: compare it with your “products” appendix point by point, whether it is the version of the logo, the margin, the colour or the colour of the material.

Also appoint a single guardian of the brand guidelines, who approves all proofs, whichever department is ordering. Once approved, the proof is binding: it is this single review that guarantees the company’s identity remains the same from one order to the next.