There’s no doubt that having a strong brand style can make your brand more recognisable through its sea of competitors. It can also make all content produced look more consistent, even if it across multiple channels. A brand style guide can cover everything from brand colours to logo design and variations, as well as imagery and other marketing materials. They can be produced by freelance designers, or even through an international digital marketing agency. But why should companies even choose to invest in a brand style guide? Would just having a logo be enough?
Below, we explain what exactly a brand style guide is, and why businesses and organisations should start thinking about investing in them.
What is a brand style guide
So, what exactly is a brand style guide in the first place? In essence, it is simply a rulebook that explains how an organisation should present itself visually. This usually means through its logo, fonts, and colour choices, in addition to photography and other visual assets. Simply put, it acts as a reference tool that helps a brand maintain consistency in how it looks and feels like. Occasionally, a brand style guide is sometimes called a brand bible – though they are essentially referring to the same thing.
This is an important tool as this guide ensures that your brand will look and feel the same even though many different people are working on your team – be they in marketing, sales, or even design! You can also use a brand style guide when working with freelancers and other partners as well.
Why are they important?
But why is a brand style guide so important to a business? Well, this is because successful branding is built on having a consistent and distinguishable style. Think of your brand’s identity as something similar to a company’s personality. It is how the world – and your target customers – recognise you from your competitors. It lets them know exactly what they will get when they are doing business with you. On the other hand, if you keep changing your branding all the time, customers are likely to not know who you are and are therefore less likely to trust in your or your products and services.
For past customers, a strong brand will also help leave them with memories that are hopefully positive – if they have a good experience with your brand – and may bring them back when they are looking for your brand again.
How to make a brand style guide
So, you are thinking about making a brand style guide for your company. In that case, where should you start? Most experts suggests that you start thinking about your company – for example, its goals, missions, values, and how you want it to be presented to its target audience. Some things that you should definitely consider include:
Mission and vision: It is best that you write down your mission statement – it should detail why your company exists – and a vision statement about where you want your business to go. These can be big goals (such as changing the world type of big) or smaller ones (solving smaller, day-to-day problems) so long as they are true to your brand.
Target audience: Here, you describe you are customers and audiences are and why they need you (for instance, their pain points, and how your products and services specifically solve their problems). If you have done market research, ten you can also categorise your target audience based on demographics like age, gender, sex, interests, hobbies, region, and more. Some marketing experts suggest brands should create a target persona, to make it clear that this is the type of person they are targeting.
Values: It is best that you also determine the guiding principles that will dominate your company’s decisions and actions. Your values will make it easier for your team to stay on brand, especially when they are designing visual assets.
Personality: you also want to jot down a few adjectives that best describe your brand. This will set the tone of your brand’s design and visual aspects. For example, is your brand sophisticate and classy? Or quirky and trendy? Your adjectives will help determine what types of colours, fonts and photos will be used for your brand.
Collect inspiration
You should also get started with doing research before actually putting your brand style guide to paper. This can help you to gain more inspiration before diving in. So, think about:
- Things that have worked for your brand in the past (for instance, successful ads, emails, etc)
- What other brands do that you want to emulate
- What questions repeatedly come up – if you are giving the same feedback, notes or answers to your designers, you may consider including this information in your guide.
- Write specific notes about what you like and what you don’t like (for example, if something is on brand or not)
Define your brand guide elements
There are six essential elements that go into every brand style guide. Here are a few of them below:
Brand story: This is where you introduce your brand to the world. You should simply summarise the insight and soul of your company, which will let people know how to represent your brand. This is also where you place your vision, mission, target audience, personality, and values.
Logo guidelines: While you may know what your logo looks like, you also need to showcase how it is going to look in different environments. This section is to ensure that your logo is used in the way it is supposed to be intended. It is also there to prevent mistakes or misuses such as altering, condensing, or re-aligning the logo. Include all approved versions of your logo, and tell readers when to use each one. You should also include visual examples to make this clear.
Colour palette/scheme: This is where you list out your main colour palette, which should be in swatches. Check that you have included the PANTONE name and number, the print colour for CYMK, and the RGB and Hex code.
Typography and font: This is another big part of one’s brand identity. Introduce the typeface that you have decided to use, what each one is used for, and how it relates to your brand.
Image guidelines: Most brands do need some form of visual assets. So here is where this section comes in. It should include the best practices for images in different formats, as well as what not to do. You can also include a mood board in order to convey a feeling that your brand should follow.
Brand voice: A brand’s voice can also affect how people perceive it. Much like with imagery, you can approach this in a variety of ways. For example, you can include words that you like, certain adjectives to describe your brand, or words and tones that should not be used.
List other brand collateral
Some other organisations may need some extra elements to include in their style guide, especially if they have other brand collateral. Ask yourself:
- Is your brand mainly digital? Do you need to include how your brand visuals should look on your website?
- Do you sell any physical products? Then you may need to include mockups and packaging guidelines on different types of merchandise.
- Do you specialise in social media marketing? Then you may want to include some social media mockups to make your posts more consistent.
