Unleashing brand consistency: How intelligent templates from Relatial are redefining design guidelines

In today's digital world, maintaining brand consistency within an ever-growing number of marketing channels is a Herculean task. While Tools like Canva and Frontify have made strides in digitizing design guidelines, Relatial is pioneering a revolutionary approach that will redefine the way brands manage their visual identity.

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The development of design guidelines

Traditionally, design guidelines were static documents or digital resources that outlined the visual representation of a brand. Platforms like Canva and Frontify have digitized this process, providing templates and guidelines for users to follow. However, these approaches are still heavily dependent on user interpretation and manual implementation, leaving room for error and inconsistency.

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‍Relatial'ssmart template approach

At Relatial, we have redefined the entire concept of design guidelines. Instead of simply showing users what a design should look like, we integrate a company's design rules directly into our intelligent templates. This fundamental difference sets us apart from competitors like Canva and Frontify.

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Our approach not only guides users, but actively prevents mistakes by directly implementing guidelines in the design process. This means that users of all skill levels, from beginners to experts, can successfully create brand-appropriate materials.

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The power of intelligent measures

The heart of Relatial's innovation lies in our powerful "actions". These smart Features work behind the scenes to ensure brand consistency without distracting users from their creative processes. Let's take a look at some real-life examples:

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• Smart text frame expansion: If you enter more content than originally planned while creating a social media post, the text frame expands seamlessly and repositions other elements to keep the overall design balanced.
• Adaptable format changes: When a landscape banner is converted to a vertical billboard, Relatial intelligently rearranges the design elements to fit the new format while maintaining the focus of the original design.
• Required prompts: When creating a product flyer, Relatial guides you through entering all the required information - product name, price, Features - and ensures that no important details are overlooked.

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Application scenarios from the real world

To illustrate the effectiveness of Relatial, let's take a look at some scenarios:

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• Franchise marketing: A global fast food chain uses Relatial to support local franchisees. Store managers can create promotional materials that automatically include local prices and offers while strictly adhering to global brand guidelines.
• Pharmaceutical company: A pharmaceutical company uses Relatial to create marketing materials that comply with regulations. The system automatically inserts the required disclaimers, ensures the correct placement of drug information and adapts the layouts to the different lengths of the translated texts for the various markets.
• Recruitment at a university: A large university uses Relatial to allow different departments to create recruitment materials. The system automatically applies the correct colors and logos for each department while maintaining consistency across the university brand.
• Real estate agents: A national real estate company uses Relatial to enable its agents to create personalized property listings. The system automatically formats property details, adjusts layouts to the number of photos available and ensures that the agent's contact information is always displayed correctly and prominently.

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Joint onboarding and creation of templates

At Relatial, we know that introducing a new design system is a significant undertaking. That's why we've developed a collaborative onboarding process that ensures a smooth transition and maximizes the potential of our intelligent template approach.

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When we start onboarding a new client, our team of experts carefully reviews all existing brand guidelines. We work closely with all stakeholders to translate these guidelines into actionable, intelligent templates. This process often reveals new opportunities for efficiency and consistency that are not possible with traditional design approaches.

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Refinement of brand guidelines for multi-channel publishing

During this collaborative process, we sometimes find that existing design guidelines need to be adapted to take full advantage of Relatial's capabilities. The ability of our system to seamlessly add different layouts and variants within a single template opens up whole new possibilities for publishing across multiple channels.

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This could mean

• Adjustment of color palettes for better consistency in digital printing
• Refinement of typography rules for use in various media
• Development of flexible layout systems that are suitable for both digital and printed formats
• Creating modular design elements that can be easily reused across different channels

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Our Team has more than a decade of experience in creating templates for different industries and Use Cases. We use this expertise to guide you through the process, offering insights and best practices that can enhance your brand's visual communication across all channels.

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Advantages of our cooperative approach

• Optimized guidelines: Your brand guidelines evolve, become more comprehensive and can be adapted to different media.
• Efficient multi-channel publishing: Create once, publish everywhere with templates that automatically adapt to different formats and platforms.
• Future-proof: When new channels appear, your templates can be easily adapted without having to start from scratch.
• Knowledge transfer: Your Team will gain insights into advanced template design and multi-channel publishing strategies.

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Practical example: PERI

Our collaborative approach has led to impressive results for global industry leaders. Let's take a look at how we've helped transform the planning processes for PERI, a manufacturer of formwork and scaffolding.

PERI came to us with a set of brand guidelines that focused mainly on printed materials for their construction products.

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We were able to help them through our cooperative process:

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• Develop a more flexible color system that works for all digital and print media and ensures that the distinctive yellow brand color remains consistent across all platforms.
• Creating a modular layout system for product presentations that adapts to different ad sizes and social media platforms, allowing them to effectively showcase their scaffolding and formwork solutions.

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The result for PERI was a comprehensive, Relatial-powered design system that allowed the company to create consistent, brand-appropriate content for everything from technical spec sheets to social media campaigns, all using a single set of smart templates. This switch not only improved brand consistency across all channels, but also significantly reduced the time and resources required to create marketing materials, allowing teams to focus more on strategy and less on design logistics.

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Learn more about the PERI use case

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Advantages for users

Since we start where others stop with our template engine, Relatial offers numerous advantages:

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• Streamlined design process: Users can create materials faster and require fewer revisions.
• Consistent brand presentation: Every piece of content is perfectly aligned with the brand guidelines.
• Democratized design: Employees from different departments can create professional-looking materials even without extensive design knowledge.
• Risk mitigation: By enforcing brand and legal compliance, Relatial significantly reduces the risk of publishing unbranded or non-compliant material.
• Increased efficiency: Marketing teams can focus on strategy and content instead of spending time on manual design reviews and corrections.

The technology behind Relatial

To deliver this cutting-edge solution, Relatial uses CHILI GraFx as an embedded Editor. This powerful combination of technologies allows us to offer a robust, user-friendly interface that brings our intelligent template concept to life.

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Conclusion

Relatial is not just another design tool - it's a paradigm shift in the way we approach brand consistency and design guidelines. By embedding rules directly into smart templates and using smart conditions, we enable organizations to maintain perfect brand consistency while unleashing the creativity of the entire team.

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Want to see how Relatial can transform your brand's marketing efforts? We're always ready to offer a personalized demo. Contact us today to see how your templates could look and work within the Relatial ecosystem. Learn firsthand how we're revolutionizing the world of design guidelines and brand management.