Standard Issues: When Your Brand Standards Hold Back Your Magazine

Make sure your magazine’s color palette hits the bull’s eye.

Whatever organization you work for, it’s likely that the job came with some corporate brand standards attached. These helpful guidelines obviate the need for you to waste time choosing new colors and fonts and image styles and layout options every time you need to generate work product.

And if your organization also runs a publication, it makes sense that the same brand standards govern the style of the content your readers encounter. Right?

Not so fast.

In most cases, you probably don’t want your publication brand standards and corporate brand standards to march in lockstep. To determine how much the two should differ, ask yourself some basic questions:

1. How often is this organization communicating with its constituents?

2. What is the nature of that communication, and how much time does the organization spend promoting itself?

3. What actions do you want readers to take as a result of reading your publication?

There are no hard and fast rules about these things, but it’s a safe bet that the purpose of your publication is only partly promotional. In the main, you probably intend for your readers to be informed and entertained during the time they spend with your publication. And if that’s the case, then as Billy Joel forgettably said, “It’s a matter of trust.”

Gaining a Reader’s Trust

Brand standards have a way of throwing the age-old conflict between editorial and advertising into sharp relief. Consider the following chart, taken from a University of Akron study that examined levels of trust demonstrated by consumers of two types of information: news articles and advertorials:

Note the questions asked by readers, relative to each type of content. Presented with unambiguously editorial articles, readers want to know the source: Is this person reliable? Can I trust this? But when the hand of commerce can be detected, readers begin to question motives: What’s the angle, here? Should I trust this?

This is why it’s important to ask how often and with what goal your organization connects with its audience. Consider the example of an alumni magazine. If recipients of the magazine are routinely bombarded with contribution solicitations from the institution, their initial receipt of the magazine is likely to be tinged with skepticism: How much is this going to cost me? That skepticism can only be reinforced if the magazine resembles, in every meaningful way, those same solicitations.

But if the magazine only bears a passing resemblance to a call for donations, readers will be able to better judge its contents on the merits. By staking out a unique voice — visual or otherwise — the publication defuses the reader’s initial reaction, supplanting doubt with curiosity.

Drawing Distinctions

Again, there are no hard and fast rules regarding which specific elements from the organizational brand standards to jettison and which to incorporate. But review the following criteria before making a decision:

1. Colors: The institutional color palette is likely the easiest element to keep consistent between overall brand and publication. However, it’s extremely unlikely that your corporate color palette is broad enough to cover the needs of a multi-page publication. Does it incorporate tints? Is there variety in the level of color saturation between the primary and secondary colors? Don’t let crucial qualities of navigation, hierarchy and legibility suffer through the rigid application of colors that were intended to solve other problems.

2. Typefaces: Most organizational brand standards will boast a primary and secondary typeface, with alternatives for closed systems like Microsoft documents or your website’s CMS. As with colors, that’s probably not enough to suit your publication. The conventions of contrasting sizes and weights from headline to deck to byline to body copy to sidebar exist for good reasons: They help to prioritize information for your readers. Unless your organizational typefaces are loaded with different weights and styles, you’re putting an unnecessary shackle on your magazine.

3. Image style: I’m going to let you in on a secret: Designers create rules around brand image styles based on a small number of examples that were developed during the comp process. Unless your magazine was part of that process, the designated image style almost certainly shouldn’t apply. It may look stunning in an annual report or a brochure. Your magazine needs a bigger toolbox.

4. Logo placement: As far as your cover is concerned, yes, the organizational logo should be placed and sized in accordance with the specifications of the brand standards. There’s no good reason not to. But there is absolutely nothing on this earth that screams, “SALES PITCH” louder than the repeated use of your logo throughout the pages of your publication. Identify yourself once (or twice, if you have a masthead). But then trust your readers to remember who you are without constantly reminding them. Trust is a two-way street.

If you’re struggling to strike the right balance between your brand and magazine standards, let Quarto walk you through some options that can satisfy both your leadership and your readership: contact@quartocreative.com