Brand Guidelines for Sub Brands

By Melon Cut ·

A hotel has a restaurant. A publisher has a children's imprint. A sports shop has a running club. Each one needs to feel like part of the family and also like its own thing. Brand guidelines for sub brands answer one question in detail: what do we share and what do we change?

First, decide the relationship

There are three common models. Choose one before you design anything.

  1. Endorsed: the sub brand has its own look and says "by Parent" in a small line. Think of a product line that stands on its own.
  2. Branded house: the sub brand uses the parent's logo style, colors and fonts, with its own name and a small variation. It is clearly part of the family.
  3. Independent: the sub brand has almost nothing in common visually and the link is hidden or minimal.

A café inside a bookshop is probably a branded house. A separate spin-off product aimed at a different audience might be endorsed.

Build a "shared and changeable" table

The simplest way to write the rules is a table.

| Element | Shared with parent | Own for sub brand | | --- | --- | --- | | Logo | Style of lettering | Name and symbol | | Main color | Neutrals | One accent color | | Fonts | Body font | Headline font | | Voice | Honest, plain | More playful | | Imagery | Natural light | Younger subjects |

Fill it in for your case. Everything in the left column keeps the family together; everything in the right is the sub brand's room to breathe.

Write the lock-up rules

When parent and sub brand appear together, say how. Which logo comes first? How much space between them? What is the smallest size where the endorsement line still reads? Put a limit on mixing too: never show the parent's accent color and the sub brand's accent side by side at equal weight.

Give each sub brand its own page

Don't bury sub brand rules in a footnote of the parent document. A dedicated set of guidelines per sub brand keeps each one clear, with the parent referenced for what is shared. This also helps when different people work on each.

Avoid the common traps

  • Too many sub brands. If you cannot explain the difference between two in one sentence, merge them.
  • Too similar. If people cannot tell them apart, there is no reason for two.
  • Too different. If a customer cannot guess they are related, the endorsement does nothing.

Prompts for testing the family

Create a square post for the sub brand @FernhillCafe, keeping the parent @Fernhill family feel: same cream background and photography style, but with the café's orange accent and a playful headline: "Coffee among the ferns".

Write three taglines for a children's imprint of a serious history publisher, keeping the parent's honest tone but making it warmer.

Review each picture, especially the logos and text.

In Melon Cut

Give each sub brand its own brand in Melon Cut Guidelines, with its own logos, colors, fonts and voice. In Melon Cut Design you can name more than one brand with @ in a prompt, which helps when a post involves a parent and a sub brand. For how the logo should sit, see Logo Usage Rules Every Brand Needs.

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