Brand guidelines impact usability

A great article that every marketing department should read. How sticking rigidly to brand guidelines on the company website can sometimes damage the brand.



David Hamill (in an article he originally wrote for Net magazine) talks through an example that illustrates a really fundamental point that so many fail to get - the user experience is the brand.

Not the colour palette or the logo or the font. But how the customer feels when they interact with the business.

David says:

People don’t look at websites, they experience them. They interact with them and this relationship can affect them emotionally. On the web it’s possible for visual brand guidelines to negatively impact the brand experience.

Branding with brains - article by David Hamill