What is a brand style guide and how do you create one?

Building strong brand awareness is the key to the success of any business, small or large, but how can one achieve this? The answer lies in brand consistency, something which can only be achieved through the creation and use of a brand style guide.

Sadly, smaller businesses often miss out on the benefits of a brand style guide, as they either don’t recognize their importance, believe they’re too time-consuming to create, or simply don’t know where to begin. Without a brand style guide, however, 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.

Thankfully, we’re written this in-depth, step-by-step guide to not only help you learn what exactly is a brand style guide but also how you can quickly and easily create one for your own business. You’ll learn what elements your brand style guide should include, how to determine your brand’s core color palette and typography, and so much more.

Brand Style Guide Definition & Overview

What is a brand style guide

Your brand guide is an in-depth document that focuses on your company's vision, values, and strategy. It's less about visual elements, such as your logo or color scheme, and more about how you communicate, interact and look, both internally and toward your customers.

A style guide, on the other hand, is a document that shows and explains how your brand is to be represented visually. Think of it as a set of guidelines about everything that plays a role in the look and feel of your brand, including your logo, color scheme, typography, and more.

To summarize, your brand guide is how you represent your brand through your communication and actions, while your style guide is how you represent your brand visually.

Why are brand guidelines important

We touched upon the importance of a brand style guide earlier, but the truth is that this document provides an incredible number of benefits to business owners.

Here are the main advantages of creating a style guide:

• 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.

• 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.

• 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. 

• 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.

• 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.

What are the 6 components of brand identity

If you want a truly effective style guide that encompasses every single aspect of your brand, you must first define the key pillars that define your brand identity.

We’ll cover each of these below, in addition to their benefits.  

Brand story

Your brand story recounts the series of events that encouraged you to start your business in the first place, as well as how this still drives who you are and what you do today. Don’t let this just be a highlight reel: a compelling brand story should also include any challenges you’ve faced along the way. As a result, your audience will develop empathy for you and your brand becomes more memorable.

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." 

Brand voice

Your brand voice can be described as your style of communication. For example, how do you talk to your customers? It should feel true to your brand values and persona and be targeted toward how your target audience speaks, thinks, or acts in order to appeal to them more. MailChimp, for example, aims for a brand voice that is clear, genuine, and with a bit of dry humor. Their content style guide even outlines how to use offbeat humor and a conversational voice to write on-brand content. 

Brand 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

Target audience

Understanding your target market helps you make more informed decisions about your brand. For example, you might take elements of your target audience's persona, such as the fact that they prefer to only use natural products, then extend these elements into your branding by opting for a predominantly green color palette to evoke a sense of nature. 

Additionally, you would use this persona to shape your brand tone and voice, using a 'gentle and caring' voice, along with key terms such as 'natural', 'organic', 'safe', and 'chemical-free' in your brand story and marketing efforts to further appeal to your target audience's persona. 

Finally, you might use symbols such as a leaf or tree in your logo to further appeal to your target audience's desire for natural products. This symbol not only helps your target audience visually identify your brand as a natural product but also allows you to differentiate yourself from your competitors in terms of your branding. 

These important brand decisions wouldn't just be a coincidence. They would have stemmed from the fact that you understood your target audience, and in turn, how they should inform your brand decisions.

How to create a brand style guide

Now that we’ve covered the benefits of having and implementing a style guide, it’s time to turn our attention to how you can begin creating your own.

Don’t worry, the following five steps will put you on the right path!

Step 1. Find some brand style guide inspiration

Start by collecting any visuals, such as photos, illustrations, or more, that you feel represent your brand in any way. For example, they might embody your desired color scheme or communicate your business’s core values or themes.

You can also encourage other staff members to do the same, so by the end of the exercise, you have a large pool of inspiration to work with. 

It’s also valuable to learn how others perceive your brand. Do you have any examples of past marketing materials, whether it be ads, social media posts, or product images, which have performed really well in the past? Collect these too, as it shows you what elements of your brand have resonated with your audience the most.

Step 2. Define the essential elements of your brand style guide

When creating your own style guide, you must include the following 5 key elements:

1. Logo guidelines that include a set of rules and recommendations on how your logo can and can’t be used. Your logo guidelines will discuss things such as:

• The spacing around your logo

• Colors that are allowed or not allowed to be used with the logo

• The typography and fonts which can and can’t be paired with your logo

• The minimum size your logo can be displayed for web or print use

• Logo variations and their uses

Logo guidelines are important for your brand, as your logo serves as the most used visual representation of your company. Additionally, your logo makes your business’s first impression, separates you from your competition, and is a point of recognition for your customers.

As a result, there are plenty of advantages to creating logo guidelines for your branding. Benefits include:

• Offering a way to exercise control over how a logo looks

• Helping to avoid altering the logo in any way, causing it to lose its integrity

• Encouraging cohesiveness in your branding

• Preventing your logo from being abused by other designers 

• Showing the right and wrong ways to use your most precious visual brand asset

A great example of a company that sets clear guidelines about its logo is Spotify. In their brand style guide, they state: "The Spotify green logo is our primary logo colorway, and it should only be used with black, white, and non-duo-toned photography. They also set out a clear "exclusion zone" with their logo's spacing, which is equal to half the height of the icon.

2. Core color palette. Your color palette simply refers to your color scheme. These are the colors your brand chooses to use to represent yourself, such as in your logo, on your website, or in your marketing materials.

Your color palette is an essential part of your brand identity, as it uses color psychology to communicate to your audience what your brand is all about. Additionally, you can use your color palette to stand out from among your competitors, make your brand memorable, and increase brand recognition.

Netflix is an example of a company that uses color palettes in its branding successfully. When you think of the brand, you imagine their bold, red, and slightly curved logo immediately, and the colors red, black, and white instantly come to mind. These colors, along with the dramatic logo, then evoke a sense of action, immediacy, and excitement, which perfectly go hand-in-hand with Netflix's mission to "create a premium cinematic feel" and "set the industry standard for original content."

3. Typography. Typography refers to the style, arrangement, and appearance of text associated with your brand. For example, the fonts you choose to use, their sizing, spacing, and more.

Typography is another important element for your brand, as it is used to guide and inform your audience, set your brand’s overall tone, optimize readability and accessibility, and ensure a great user experience.

4. Voice. This refers to the way a company talks to customers. Your brand voice is directed at your target audience and aims to infuse a company’s communication with personality and emotion.

5. Imagery. Your brand imagery is the way you visually represent your brand to communicate messages to your consumers, such as the images you post on social media, the way your product looks, the packaging you use, and the images you use in marketing campaigns. It all comes down to aesthetic appearance.

Step 3. Determine other brand-specific needs your guide should cover

Some things to also consider including in your brand style guide include:

• How do you set out images and text on your website, especially if your brand is primarily digital

• Packaging guidelines, if you sell physical products

• Social media marketing guidelines, if you frequently use social media to communicate with your audience

• Store signage design, if you have a brick-and-mortar store

• How your stationery should look, such as business cards, letterheads, envelopes, invoices, etc.

Step 4. Make the style guide outline

Now that you know which sections you should include in your brand style guide, it’s time to flesh out your document in the form of an outline to help you stay on track. This way, you won’t miss any important elements which need to be covered.

For each section (for example, brand story, logo, color palette, etc.), you should detail your final decision on this element, as well as why you chose this, and any additional rules surrounding the element, such as what you should and should not do.

For now, you can simply jot down this information as bullet points. Then, once you’re ready to finalize your brand guide, you can revisit this information and present it in a more polished manner.

Step 5. Plan for evolution

Here’s the thing about a brand style guide: it’s never really complete. You see, as time goes on, your business will grow and evolve, and so too will your branding.

This is the beauty of such a document, as you’ll revisit it periodically and can always add to it or adjust it.

Keep a folder on your computer with any new ideas that you come across over time, then you’ll have them in a handy place when it’s time to review your brand style guide to see what’s working well and what might need altering.

Conclusion

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 using the help of freelance professionals, such as graphic designers and business writers.

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.