The eao-lab engagement was tightly bounded: create the brand guidelines. No long-run editorial support, no content production — deliver a system, then leave.
That's the most demanding format in art direction. When you stay, you can patch the grey areas as they come up. When you deliver and go, everything you didn't write down will be interpreted — and interpreted badly.
What guidelines need to contain to survive
- The type system: hierarchy, sizes, weights, and above all what is forbidden.
- The palette: the colours, their roles, and their contrast ratios checked — a brand colour that fails accessibility is a time bomb.
- Usage rules: the edge cases, permitted backgrounds, minimum sizes, forbidden pairings.
- Templates: enough to produce the ten most frequent pieces of collateral without starting from a blank page.