26 May
Your company is more than just the products or services you sell. A strong brand tells the world why they should choose you over all the other options on the market. A brand style guide tells your team how to stay true to that brand.
Your brand’s identity is more of a philosophy than an image. It is what brings your business to life, reflecting its mission and setting you apart in the market.
In order to determine and maintain a consistent identity throughout all aspects of their brand, many business owners will turn to a brand style guide. A style guide is an incredibly valuable asset for brands at any stage of their development, and if you’re ready to dominate the marketplace, it’s a good idea to start creating one.
What is a brand style guide?
A brand style guide is a rulebook that explains how an organization presents itself to the world through its logo, font and color selections, photography and much more. Put another way, it’s a reference tool that helps maintain consistency in what a brand looks, feels and sounds like. It’s so powerful that some people even call it a brand bible, but don’t let that intimidate you, those are just different names for the same document.
Using a brand book ensures that your brand looks and feels the same, even when you have different people working on customer service, marketing, design and sales.
The importance of brand guidelines
The truth is that a brand style guide provides an incredible number of benefits to business owners. Here are the main advantages of creating and using a brand style guide for your own business:
1. Creates consistency: It’s important to communicate consistent brand identity, as this plays a huge role in making your brand recognizable, and therefore, reliable. Every time someone interacts with your brand, whether it be through your social media, blog, or marketing materials, they are receiving a perception of what your business is all about. When this perception is clear and consistent, it works wonders for your brand recognition and loyalty.
2. Sets standards that must be followed: As a business owner or solo entrepreneur, there’s no doubt you know your brand like the back of your hand. A new employee, however, will not. Therefore, it’s vital they have a document they can access to teach them everything they need to know about what to do, or not to do when representing your brand. Likewise, a brand style guide comes in handy when working with freelance talents, such as writers, designers, or developers.
3. Builds trust: Think of some of the most trustworthy, and therefore successful, brands in the world. If Google comes to mind, for example, so too does their logo, color scheme, or even some of their popular products that you implement in your day-to-day life. With a crystal-clear idea of how your brand represents itself to the world, and by showing up cohesively over a period of time, you too can go a long way in establishing your professionalism, integrity, and in turn, trust.
4. Aligns your interests with your intended audience: There’s nothing like developing a brand style guide that allows you to truly sit down and think about your business interests, and how these align with your audience’s needs, on a whole new level. When you determine things such as your company values, brand voice, or how you want your color scheme to make your audience feel, you’re really getting back to the heart and soul of your business.
5. Allows you to keep organized: It’s important to emphasize that brand style guides aren’t just for graphic designers. As a business owner, there’s no doubt you have a million things to worry about, so having a document that keeps track of all of your brand elements and concepts can save you an incredible amount of time and stress in trying to locate this information across several different places.
Key brand pillars that define brand identity
If you want a truly effective style guide that encompasses every single aspect of your brand, you must identify the key brand pillars that define your brand identity. We’ll cover each of these below, in addition to their benefits.
Brand mission
Put simply, your brand mission is your “why.” It’s a short statement declaring the present purpose behind your business. A well-constructed brand mission will provide a consistent direction for your company’s strategy and inspire your customers to take part. Take Twitter’s mission statement, for example, which is “to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers.”
Brand vision
While your brand mission focuses on what you’re doing in the present, your brand vision should explain your aspirations for the future. It’s a statement explaining clearly and concisely what you ultimately want your business to become, whether that’s 5, 10, or 20 years from now. What will be your ‘end game’? How do you want to shape the world or the lives of your target market? When it was founded, Microsoft had the simple, yet powerful vision of “a microcomputer on every desk and in every home running Microsoft software.”
Target audience
Describe who your customers are and why they need you (i.e. how your products or services solve their problems). If you’ve done market research, include any insights that could help your team communicate more effectively to your customers.
Core values
What are the beliefs your company stands for and how are these aligned with your vision and mission? Your brand values are important, as not only do they help you maintain your authenticity, but consumers and employees are more likely to support a brand whose core values align with their own.
Often, it’s hard being able to articulate exactly what you want to say about your business but this is where a business writer can help. They are trained and experienced in writing compelling content that your target audience can connect with, particularly when it comes to the following:
- Mission and vision statements
- Company values, such as the culture of your company
- Tagline or slogan, for example, a short phrase to influence and strengthen your audience’s memory of your product or service
How to create a brand style guide
You can’t just put up all the brilliant ideas you’ve come up with for your brand, Instead you need to understand what matters most and then put them all together. Creating a brand style guide will entail some brainstorming and strategic thinking, but once you’re done, you’ll have an aesthetic book for your business that you’ll always be able to modify and refer back.
1. Define your brand identity
Before combing your brand assets into a documented style guide, you first need to define your brand identity. Start by defining your brand’s goals, values, mission and target market. From here, define how these details will be expressed by the look, voice and behavior of your brand. Is your brand empowering and uplifting? Or friendly and informative? Perhaps it is ambitious and professional? Whatever your personality, each element of your design should reflect your brand’s character.
2. Research your competitors
Check out what others in your field are doing with a bit of market research – who wore their brand identity better? Take note of what you like and don’t like, and use this as inspiration for your own brand style guide. This type of research can be a means to rule out what isn’t working or to take note of what’s already been done. Since your goal is to stand out, you don’t want to use aesthetic combinations that might lead your brand to be confused with others.
3. Include all the essential elements
Each brand’s style guide is unique, and will differ in detail and execution. One common goal to keep in mind is to make sure your style guide is cohesive, easy-to-apply, and includes the following tangible components:
- Introduction
- Typography
- Color palette
- Iconography & photography
- Grid system
- Tone of voice
4. Make a list of collateral
Think about your collateral goals and how your brand style guide will address them. Will your advertising materials be printed, digital or both? If you are selling or distributing products whether at a physical location or using your online store you will want to consider having a section devoted to product branding and packaging. If you have a strong focus on social media or blogging, you’ll want to emphasize your brand’s copy and tone of voice.
5. Plan for brand evolution
Some of the best brands are remembered for their eloquent evolution. Your brand style guide is a living, breathing document that you’ll revisit as your business grows. Lay down a solid foundation so that the ongoing development of your brand’s identity will be easy to apply. Pro tip: designate a place to keep new ideas as they come up so you can find them when it’s time to review.
What to include in your brand style guide
Now that you understand what a brand style guide is, let’s go over in more detail the essential elements that should be included in yours:
1. Introduction: Your brand’s mission
Start off your brand style guide with a clear and concise introduction. Tell the conceptual story of your brand by including a version of your mission statement with an overview of what your brand looks like and why. This will help employees and stakeholders understand your brand and develop a connection with it. You can also explain the importance of your brand style guide in this section.
2. Logo
Your logo is your brand’s defining symbol and is one of the key elements in your brand style guide. In addition to showing it off, this section should highlight any of its variations and include all the specifications for using your logo in design – such as the spacing around it, size rules, file formats, etc. Logo rules to consider:
- Sizing – establish a minimum size for your logo’s text to be legible.
- Size in relationship to other assets, like taglines.
- Clear space – how to handle the space surrounding the logo to avoid interference.
3. Typography
Typography refers to the font (or typeface) you choose for your brand identity. Your brand style guide needs to exactly spell out which font families to use for your brand and in what situations and for what specific purposes. Most brands use a 1-2 primary fonts and 1-2 complimentary secondary fonts.
- Primary fonts should be chosen for their flexibility so they can be manipulated in different ways (e.g. uppercase/lowercase, bold, italics) and it should be web friendly. We recommend using Google Web Fonts so they can be viewed correctly across most modern devices. These fonts are generally clean and legible serif or sans-serif fonts.
- Secondary fonts can be more creative like script or display fonts and are great for adding brand personality and style to your brand.
It is also useful in the brand style guide to visually show how the various styles can be applied for items like titles/headers, subtitles/subheads, paragraph titles, emphasized text, captions and body copy.
4. Color palette
Your brand’s color palette is generally made up of primary and secondary colors. Your primary colors may be derived from your logo or they may stand alone. This palette may also include a ‘Call To Action’ button contrast color.
Your secondary colors are usually complimentary to your primary palette and may be made up of subtle variations to your primary palette. This allows for more scope and flexibility in the design process.
Colors require different values and settings on various printing processes and devices. Always include print and screen / web color equivalents. For print, include CMYK and Pantone references, while screen / web colors are often defined in RGB and HEX codes.
5. Iconography & photography
Advertising, websites, blog posts and other material for your business will require the use of iconography and photography. Whether these are borrowed from the internet or customized for your brand, these images are part of the visual system that carries your message to targeted audiences, and should remain consistent with your identity.
In this section, identify the qualities your brand’s imagery should include and how your visual assets should look and feel (bright, natural, vintage, etc.). You might even create custom illustrations for your brand – in which case you will also define your illustration style.
6. Grid system
Defining the way to structure your content is something that should not be overlooked in a brand style guide. A grid system will lay out the architecture of your brand’s visual components, making sure all of your materials look neat and well balanced. This system can outline measurements for margins, spacing and columns – details that are especially important for directing the layout of printed material assets like business cards and company letterheads, as well as your website design.
7. Tone of voice
Establish your brand as a unique personality by developing a prolific voice. Like other aspects of your brand’s identity, a tone of voice should be strong and consistent in order to be impactful. This element of your brand style guide will help writers adopt the right language when crafting any kind of copy for your brand, from advertisements to blog posts. By exhibiting a consistent tone, audiences will get to know the character of your brand, and will learn to recognize and trust you.
Wrap up
Without a brand style guide, you run the risk of diluting your brand’s message, your business’s values, and the way in which you want consumers to think of you. After all, building a strong brand identity is key to the success of a business, and the number one way to achieve this is with brand consistency, something which can only be achieved through creating and following a brand style guide.
Thanks to this helpful, step-by-step guide, you now not only understand the importance of such a document but also what goes into a brand style guide and how you can easily create one
It all starts with gathering your brand inspiration and determining what message you want to be putting out there into the world. Then, armed with your brand style guide, you can move forward on your business journey knowing that you’ve taken every step necessary to represent your brand with the cohesiveness it deserves.