Using Brand Guidelines for Better User Experience in Apps

To create a better user experience in apps, brand guidelines ensure consistency, familiarity, and alignment with the brand’s identity. By integrating visual elements like colors, fonts, and logos consistently, users feel more connected and trust the app. Additionally, clear tone, messaging, and seamless design across touchpoints enhance usability and reinforce the brand’s promise.

Excerpt of “Using Brand Guidelines for Better User Experience in Apps”

Incorporating brand guidelines into app development enhances user experience by creating a cohesive design language. Colors, typography, and icons ensure visual harmony while consistent tone and messaging resonate with users. By designing with brand principles in mind, apps can build trust, encourage engagement, and stand out in a competitive market.

What you’ll learn in this article:

• The role of brand guidelines in improving app consistency.
• How to integrate design elements to enhance the user experience.
• Tips for aligning user interaction with brand identity.

User experience has become the holy grail for any company in the digital space, as it can literally make or break a product’s success. Innovation and functionality are important, but brand visibility is crucial.

Now, when competition is everywhere, consistency in branding is vital. If a brand cannot decide what it is and is not or what its values are, it will be challenging to create a good user experience.

Brand guidelines are often associated with marketing. However, they can be applied to app design, ensuring that every user interaction feels intentional and cohesive.

We explore how brand guidelines enhance app UX and strengthen brand identity.

How Brand Guidelines Improve User Experience in Apps

• Consistent Visual Identity: Ensures users instantly recognize the brand through colors, fonts, and logos.
• Improved Usability: A cohesive design framework enhances navigation and interaction.
• Brand Personality Reflection: Users connect emotionally when the app reflects the brand’s tone and values.
• Trust Building: Uniformity across all touchpoints increases user trust and loyalty.
• Competitive Advantage: A distinct brand identity ensures the app stands out.

Brand Guidelines Matter More Than Ever in App Design

Brand guidelines provide a roadmap for maintaining consistency across all platforms and touchpoints. They define elements like typography, color schemes, voice, tone, and interaction styles. These elements, in turn, can help create the desired user experience.

For apps, it is essential to ensure that every screen, button, and animation aligns with the company’s identity. This consistency creates trust and simplifies navigation. 

The Role of Brand Guidelines in Improving UX

User Experience is big business due to extreme competition and a customer that is spoilt for choice.

According to Fortune Business Insights, the User Experience market value was $3.5 billion in 2023 and is growing 30 percent yearly. Therefore, it makes sense to invest in and focus on a consistent brand identity and provide customers with a better overall experience. Brand guidelines play a vital role in this.

Better Visual Clarity

Users should not feel as if they are navigating multiple brands or sub-brands within the same app. Clear, consistent guidelines for fonts, colors, and imagery would ensure a design that reinforces the brand identity. The user should be able to recognize and remember the brand and not be lost in words and diverse colors that are not cohesive. 

Many designers also make an error of putting too much information or options in the limited space available. Adding the element of space makes for better visual clarity.

Streamlined Navigation

Predictability is important for us, as we are creatures of habit and fall back on our reflexive memories.  We want the least cognitive load while navigating an app. 

For instance, Apple Music offers superior-quality music, but the app is still not as popular as Spotify due to its navigation problems.

Brand guidelines influence layout and interaction design. Familiar visual cues, such as button styles or navigation menus, make apps intuitive and easy to use. This helps users focus on their goals rather than figuring out how the app works.

Building Emotional Connections

Many design choices evoke specific emotions, and if they are rooted in brand identity, they have a high recall value. This is especially true for colors and certain styling choices, which become the brand’s signature.

For instance, a finance app can use brand guidelines online by Lingo to redesign its interface with professional colors like navy blue. This would ensure the app development team uses the brand-specific colors, typography, and interaction styles to match the overall look and feel. 

The app that is finally shipped would be cohesive, with customers forming an emotional connection due to the specific colors and style.

Best Practices for Applying Brand Guidelines in App Development

Make Your Brand Assets Centerstage

Ensure your brand assets are not disorganized. Allow teams to store and access brand assets from one place, ensuring that everyone is working from the same playbook.

In case there is any change coming from upper management, the update of the same should be universal and quick to implement. If the brand assets are scattered, any change will take more time to be fully implemented.

Balance Consistency With Creativity

While consistency is crucial, overly rigid guidelines can stifle innovation. To address specific design challenges, allow room for creative flexibility within the brand’s framework. This gives team members room to play and can spark great design or UI ideas.

Better UX, Better Impact

The online world has been eating up the physical world, and every company is now a digital experience company. A website or app design needs to be top-notch to be able to compete. As Forbes notes, investing in a great user experience is crucial for brand loyalty and saving time and money.

Brand guidelines are essential in this crucial juncture of time, where user expectations are at an all-time high. Aligning app design with robust brand guidelines is a way to create a more professional and impactful brand identity.