Building a consistent brand starts with a brand style guide. This guide helps graphic designers, marketers, web developers, community managers, and product packaging teams present a unified brand vision to the public.
The best brands stick in our minds because they consistently use the same logo, fonts, colors, and images. When we see them often enough, they become instantly recognizable. This consistency is achieved when everyone on your team follows a unified brand style guide.
So, what is a brand guideline? and brand style guide? In this article, I’ll go through all the things and elements of a style guide and share some amazing examples that help you take action and inspire your next branding project or website redesign.
Table of Contents
What are brand guidelines?
Brand guidelines, also called brand style guides, control the design and overall look of a company’s branding. They dictate how logos, blogs, websites, advertisements, and other marketing materials should appear.
Think of the most recognizable brands you know.
You likely recognize them because of these reasons:
- Consistent written or visual messaging
- Uniform brand colors across all channels
- Familiar language
- Organized and cohesive presentation
Before creating your brand guidelines, take a step back and define your brand’s mission statement and buyer personas. These strategic elements will guide you in developing the detailed components of your brand style guide.
Brand Guidelines Mission Statement
Your mission statement serves as the compass for your brand style guide. It’s an action-oriented declaration of your organization’s purpose.
This statement ensures that all your content works towards the same goal and resonates with your audience. It can guide your blog and paid content, ad copy, visual media, and slogan.
Brand Guidelines Buyer Persona
A buyer persona is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. It includes specifics like job title, age, gender, and professional challenges, helping to identify the target audience for your brand’s content.
This persona guides your blog posts, ad copy, and visual media, attracting valuable leads and customers to your business
The Elements of a Brand Style Guide
A brand style guide covers more than just a logo (although that’s important, too). It visually represents everything your brand stands for, right down to your business’s purpose.
Here are some key elements that can make or break a brand style guide:
Logo
Your logo might seem like the simplest part of your branding guidelines, but it’s actually one of the most complex and important components. In your guide, you should:
- Include a visual of your logo.
- Explain the design details of your logo.
- Describe how your logo can be used by external and internal publishers.
You should also include examples of incorrect logo usage, such as rotating the design or altering the font. This ensures your logo looks consistent everywhere, whether published by you or someone else.
Pro tip: If your brand is well-known and frequently covered by various outlets, consider providing a separate document with detailed acceptable use policies for your logo.
Color Palette
The color palette is one of the most distinctive and recognizable parts of a company’s branding guidelines. It’s the group of colors your company uses to design its brand assets, guiding every piece of visual content created.
These color combinations often follow HEX, and RGB codes and apply to your logo, web design, printed ads, and event collateral.
Pro tip: A brand color palette should include not only your primary color but also a variety of secondary, tertiary, and neutral colors.
This allows for more dynamic and varied designs during content creation. Without a defined array of options, your team might use random secondary colors, leading to an inconsistent look.
Typography
Typography is a crucial visual element of your brand style guide that goes beyond the font used in your logo. It influences your brand’s design, from website links and copy to your tagline.
I recommend specifying a primary and secondary font, with a mix of serifs and font weights for different use cases. This approach allows for consistency and variety in your branding materials.
The goal of your branding guidelines is to empower your team and external stakeholders to create cohesive yet diverse collateral. Avoid limiting them to a single font option.
For instance, Company X uses Open Sans (sans-serif) as their primary font and Merriweather (serif) as their secondary font. These fonts are used across their website, marketing materials, and design platforms like Adobe Creative Cloud, ensuring a consistent brand identity.
Pro tip: Remember, typography significantly impacts your website’s user experience. Ensure it is visually appealing, accessible, and easy to read.
Imagery and Iconography
While your guidelines may only include your logo, colors, and fonts, for a stronger style guide, consider adding approved imagery, pre-designed icons, and custom symbols for use across your website and print materials.
If your budget is limited, recommend specific photographic styles (e.g., candid vs. staged) and direct content creators to your preferred stock photo provider, such as Shutterstock or Unsplash.
Alternatively, you can commission a company photoshoot and make the resulting images available for creative use.
Pro tip: Symbols and icons are excellent additions to your branding guidelines. Like photos, you can find free icons online and recommend which ones to use (e.g., outlines only vs. full color). You can also commission custom icons from a freelance graphic designer.
Brand Voice
If your company visuals are the flesh and bones of your style guide, then your brand voice is the beating heart.
The importance of your brand voice can’t be overstated. Whether you want your company’s personality to be friendly and casual or more formal and distant, it’s crucial to clearly define it. This ensures that marketers, salespeople, and content creators can consistently represent your brand across all channels.
A well-defined brand voice helps create a cohesive message that resonates with your audience. It should guide all forms of communication, including:
- Blog Content: Ensure a consistent tone that aligns with your brand’s personality.
- Social Media Posts: Maintain a unified voice across different platforms.
- Advertising Copy: Create ads that reflect your brand’s character.
- Customer Service Interactions: Provide a consistent experience for customers.
Pro Tip: Consider including a full editorial style guide that outlines:
- Tone of Voice: Specific guidelines on how to phrase products and services.
- Content Topics: Lists of topics the brand can and cannot cover.
- Language: Preferred terminology and writing style.
- Examples: Provide clear examples of the brand voice in action.
Your brand voice is the heart of your brand style guide. It ensures that every piece of content, from blog posts to customer emails, speaks with a consistent and recognizable tone.
Style Guide Examples
Mailchimp: Mailchimp’s style guide includes detailed sections on their logo, color palette, typography, imagery, and voice, ensuring a playful yet professional brand identity.
Google: Google’s Material Design guidelines cover extensive details on color, typography, imagery, and interaction design, promoting a clean and user-friendly aesthetic.
Airbnb: Airbnb’s style guide emphasizes the use of their unique logo, a warm color palette, and clear, inviting typography to reflect their welcoming and inclusive brand voice.
Spotify: Spotify’s brand guidelines include comprehensive details on logo usage, color palette, typography, and imagery, maintaining their vibrant and energetic brand identity.
Coca-Cola: Coca-Cola’s brand guidelines are known for their emphasis on their iconic red color, unique logo, and timeless, classic typography. The guidelines ensure that the brand’s image remains consistent and recognizable across all touchpoints.
McDonald’s: McDonald’s brand style guide covers the use of their golden arches logo, color palette featuring their signature red and yellow, and a friendly, approachable tone that reflects their global presence and appeal.
Uber: Uber’s brand guidelines focus on a modern and sleek design, with an emphasis on simplicity. The style guide covers the use of their logo, monochrome color palette, and straightforward, professional typography.
Microsoft: Microsoft’s brand guidelines include comprehensive details on the use of their logo, a diverse color palette, and a modern, clean typography that reflects their innovative and professional brand identity.
How to Create Effective Brand Guidelines? (Resources)
Creating effective brand guidelines is crucial for maintaining a consistent and recognizable brand identity.
Here are some key resources and tips to help you develop comprehensive and effective brand guidelines:
Books (pdf)
- Designing Brand Identity: An Essential Guide for the Whole Branding Team by Alina Wheeler – This book offers a detailed overview of the branding process and provides practical advice on creating and implementing brand guidelines.
- Building A StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen by Donald Miller – While not solely about brand guidelines, this book helps clarify your brand’s messaging, which is a critical component of your guidelines.
- Branding: In Five and a Half Steps by Michael Johnson – This book provides a clear process for branding and includes practical examples of brand guidelines.
Online Resources
- Canva’s Brand Kit Guide – Canva offers a user-friendly guide on creating brand kits, which are simplified brand guidelines that can be very useful for smaller businesses or startups.
Also read about what are 8 types of graphic design?
Templates and Tools
- Adobe Spark’s Brand Guidelines Templates – Adobe Spark offers templates that can help you get started with brand guidelines, especially if you’re new to the process.
- Frontify – Frontify is a tool specifically designed to create and manage brand guidelines, offering a range of features to keep your brand consistent.
Key Elements of Effective Brand Guidelines
- Brand Mission and Vision – Clearly state the purpose and values of your brand.
- Logo Usage – Provide guidelines on how to use your logo, including size, placement, and color variations.
- Color Palette – Define primary and secondary colors, including specific color codes (e.g., HEX, RGB).
- Typography – Specify the fonts used in your branding, including how and where they should be used.
- Imagery and Iconography – Outline the style of images and icons that align with your brand.
- Voice and Tone – Describe the style of communication and language that should be used in all brand materials.
- Application Examples – Include examples of how brand elements should be applied across various mediums (e.g., business cards, websites, social media).
Additional Tips
- Keep it Updated: Regularly review and update your brand guidelines to ensure they remain relevant as your brand evolves.
- Be Comprehensive but Flexible: Include enough detail to maintain consistency, but allow for some flexibility to adapt to new situations and media.
- Get Feedback: Involve key stakeholders in the creation process to ensure the guidelines meet the needs of everyone involved in representing your brand.
By leveraging these resources and focusing on these elements, you can create effective brand guidelines that help ensure your brand’s identity is consistently communicated across all touchpoints.