Don’t tell, show. Was our approach to define DRH’s global Instagram Visual Identity Playbook.

Three brand values must be portrayed without being explicitly explained. Simple, authentic and radiant. Our job was to create a series of guidelines that could be easily executed across the different markets and their respective accounts.

Content Pillars

Consisting of Nature, People, Product and Copy. When creating or selecting visuals we encouraged the client to ask him/herself: do they express ‘a force of nature’?

We divided the kind of content into categories and suggested examples of how to treat the subjects, composition and treatment in order to portray the brand values.

The look / Visual treatment

Simplicity will be brought by the composition. Where few elements will be on focus, making them the “protagonist“. Authenticity will be achieved both by portraying nature as it is, as well as, avoiding unnatural post editing. Radiance will be achieved by enhancing the natural colours, contrast, luminosity and detail in the image or video. In general we recommended using natural light to give all images a natural golden look to them.

Channels

Instagram is not one channel, it’s six. And each of them can bring different value to the users. Stories are short lived and therefore time relevant. They do not need to be perfectly crafted and/ or can be more experimental with the look. All while following the brand values.

On the other hand, Highlights are long term and can be used to present the lines of products from the brand within the first glance of their feed. Feed posts and IGTV would follow the basic fundaments of the VI.

It is relevant to mention that advertisement posts that would be visible on the feed would need to follow the same guidelines as the organic posts. If there are other campaign-specific visuals that need to be included in the post they will be added right after the first card of a carousel.