How To Create a Brand Style Guide
It is really important that all content a business creates presents a unified brand image. In fact, we feel so passionately about it that we wrote a blog on the matter: 5 Reasons Why Consistency in Design Is So Important For Your Business. To sum up, consistent design removes confusion, is visually pleasing, creates brand recognition, builds trust and ultimately saves time and money. All great wins for any business!
Realistically though, how do you achieve consistency in design? If your creative team is more than a one-man band, how do you get everyone to create content that dances to the same tune? Us humans, we all interpret things and situations differently.
Take a choir for example. This choir has no sheet music, no choral director and no particular song in mind. They are just told to all start singing something appropriate for a church setting. Firstly, if they haven’t been provided with any starting note or key signature, the result could be jarring – utter audible chaos!
But even if they were to all miraculously start singing the same song in the same key – so that the sound works on some level –- there will still be things that don’t sit right. Some singers may instinctively think of gospel music and start performing vocal acrobatics to rival Mariah Carey. Others may err towards a more classical sound. They start singing with a pure, straight vocal tone like you would hear in the hallowed halls of Westminster Cathedral.
Without clear leadership and guidelines, there is room for interpretation. The same principle applies for the visual arts. So how do you keep all parties contributing towards brand image — from graphic designers, to web developers or the social team — singing from the same hymn sheet?
Like a choir director oversees a choir, an art director brings together all the various creative departments. However, not all businesses have an art director among their ranks to vet every piece of content intended for public consumption. Even if they do, they may not always be available. They need to take time off work and have a holiday too! This is where a brand style guide comes in handy.
In today’s blog, we will explain what a brand style guide is and what it must include.
What is a brand style guide?
A brand style guide works in a very similar way to sheet music. It keeps all departments working in harmony with one another. Sheet music tells a singer what notes and words to sing when, how loud the note should be and what tonal quality it should have. A brand style guide tells designers and writers what visual elements and language to use when, how big visual elements should feature on a page and what tone the words should embody.
A brand style guide is essentially a rulebook or how-to guide. Lists of dos and don’ts, checklists, examples, tools and resources, are all really useful devices to include. They help to clearly outline and define what should and shouldn’t be done design- and messaging-wise. This makes it so much easier for teams to create on-brand results. It massively reduces the number of mistakes made and the number of revisions required to rectify them.
On that note, a brand style guide shouldn’t be more than 4-5 pages. If it is too long it becomes difficult to digest and follow. Your team may want to give up and that is when mistakes start to creep in. On the other hand, they may work through every detail in the document painstakingly, which can really slow down the content creation process.
What should a brand style guide include?
A brand style guide can be broken down into 3 key sections: your business’s heart, sound and look. The “heart” is a section summarising your brand identity; the beating heart of your business and what you stand for. The following 2 sections – “sound” and “look” — both communicate the messages of the “heart” tangibly through words and visuals.
Contents Table
First things first, include a table of contents. One of the main purposes of a brand style guide is to create on-brand content quickly, saving time and money. Provide shortcuts and direct members of your team to the specific information they need. Save them from having to do a full-on revision session of your business’s branding every time!
Your Heart
This section is all about your brand’s identity. Your core messaging. In order to succinctly communicate your business’s identity, you will first need to have a deep understanding of the following elements: your mission and vision statements, values, target audience and personality. They all help to paint a picture. Here is a brief overview of each one:
Mission
A mission statement is 2-3 sentences that explain why a company exists at all. It explains its purpose, whom it serves and what differentiates it from all the other services out there. A mission statement is what the company is doing right now. All content that is created should seek to further or strengthen the mission.
Vision
Vision and mission statements often get confused. Whereas the mission statement is about the here and now, the vision statement is about what your business hopes to achieve in the future. It is helpful to know what direction of travel your business is heading in. Designers and writers can follow suit and reflect your direction of travel through the design and wording, helping your business move towards its goals.
Values
Values are core beliefs and principles that describe the way you do business. They provide a clear framework from which to make decisions. They need to be clear, concise and memorable. That way, they are more likely to be at the forefront of all employee’s minds and can be easily applied and lived out in all areas of the business. It is wise not to go overboard and have too many values that you can’t recall them. 5-10 core values will suffice!
Target Audience
Your target audience is your ideal customer. For the purposes of a brand style guide, summing up your target audience with a buyer persona is a great way for designers and writers to quickly understand who they are creating content for. Buyer personas are detailed fictional characters that represent your customer base. They have names, demographics, interests, goals, pain points and consumer behaviours.
Buyer personas give everyone on the team the same tangible person to create content for. Instead of reading “our target audience is owners of playful dogs” the target audience becomes “Shaggy Rogers.” Instantly, everyone has a clearer and more specific image in mind of who they are trying to communicate to. As a result, there will be greater consistency across all messaging and designs.
Personality
If your brand was a human being or friend, what 5 words would you use to describe them? That is a brand personality. Are they calm or energetic? Goofy or suave? Traditional or modern? 5 words can say a lot about your brand and conjure up a lot of visual connotations, helping to steer creative direction.
How should you communicate your brand’s heart?
Your brand’s heart can be communicated all on the confines of 1-2 pages. This section of a brand style guide will look different for every business. A lot of the advice out there suggests summing up all of the above information in an easy to read narrative form. This is what is known as a brand story.
A brand story can really set the scene. It tells the tale of how your business started. It takes the reader on a journey through all the major headline moments of your business that lead to what it is today. It also sums up all of the above information (mission and vision statement, values, target audience and personality) in an engaging way. Stories also evoke emotion and pictures. Therefore, they have been and are great sources of inspiration for many creatives.
Here is a helpful guide by Hubspot on How to Tell a Compelling Brand Story. Again, keep it short and sweet — a trailer, not the extended cut! A brand style guide is an efficiency tool!
Your Sound
This section is all about how your brand sounds — your brand voice. A brand voice is how a brand’s identity is conveyed through words, written or spoken. There are lots of factors that contribute to the overall brand voice. Let’s break them down:
Brand Voice Characteristics
Whereas brand personality is about who the brand is, brand voice is about how that personality is conveyed through words and speech to the target audience. A brand’s voice can be summarised – at a high-level – with a few overarching characteristics. Return to your personality traits. Each will have an accompanying voice quality that brings out that aspect of the personality.
Take a whimsical event planning business. Using a quirky tone within their communications will infer their whimsy. If a business describes itself as approachable, a friendly tone will definitely make customers feel more comfortable approaching them. Feature your brand’s voice qualities front and centre of this section within your brand style guide. This way, your writer’s will instantly know what sort of thing you are looking for!
Vocabulary
Our vocabularies are the words we use. So if your brand was a person, what would be their choice of words? Would they use formal or everyday language? Slang and colloquial terms? Would they use industry-specific terminology or avoid jargon like the plague?
Provide a brief overview of the words your brand would and would not say. Remember, to keep your target audience in the back of your mind. You need to speak their language too. These details paint a clearer image for your team, empowering them to create consistent messaging.
Tone of Voice
The terms “brand voice” and “tone of voice” are interchangeably used all over the internet. However, Hubspot provides a really clear explanation on what they are:
“Think of voice as a constant, a personality that doesn’t change.
Tone is a mood, or how you express yourself in different contexts.”
Clearly explain the nuances in your brand’s tone of voice; how it expresses itself across different contexts. A great example to demonstrate this is social media. Say your brand is funny. Posts on LinkedIn tend to have a more professional, formal tone and so your brand’s humour could play out in a witty way. With Twitter, brevity is key and businesses can afford to be more casual. Sarcasm is a form of humour that works really well on this platform.
How should you communicate your brand’s sound?
How you present all of the above information about your brand voice in your brand style guide is down to each individual business. Ultimately, you are going to communicate the rules and guidelines about your brand voice using your brand voice. However, there are some tools that have proven to be universally effective in communicating brand voice goals to creative teams.
Lists of do’s and don’ts are incredibly useful. Hubspot has a free Brand Voice Template you can use at the bottom of this article (plus some more helpful reading on creating your brand voice too). Links to exemplary writing samples that embody your brand voice perfectly, are great resources as well. We learn by example!
Another effective method is to start with a plain, core message and show how you would give it the “brand treatment.” There is a wonderful example of this in this Nielsen Norman Group article.They demonstrate how the core message of “an error has occurred” can be written in different ways according to brand voice.
Any designer reading a brand style guide may be tempted to skim over this section. But they mustn't! A well-defined brand voice can be an incredibly powerful and influential driver within visual design decision-making. Just have a read of this blog from Medium for a real-life example. It puts forth a strong case for the inclusion of brand voice within a brand style guide.
Just to reiterate the point further, here are some of our own ideas on how brand voice can influence design:
Playful? Incorporate interactive web elements or load web pages in a fun way.
Edgy? Reflect your company’s edginess through sharp forms in the graphical design.
Serious? Opt for a more static website with straight-laced, traditional headshots.
An aside…
A brand style guide and a copywriting style guide are different things. A copywriting style guide goes into a lot more depth about the mechanics of written content. This will be things like grammar, punctuation, format, structure and citation methodologies. It will also touch on brand voice and personality but not in as much depth as a brand style guide.
Your Look
This section of a brand style guide is your designer’s Bible. It can be nicely summed up by a quote from the iconic 90’s movie “Mean Girls.” The Plastics explain to new girl Cady, “on Wednesdays, we wear pink.” This statement not only specifies what the look is but also when to use it. This section of the brand style guide does exactly the same thing. Web designers, graphic designers, content creators and social media teams, can all refer to this section to ensure their work is on-brand.
Logos
Introduce your primary logo. Succinctly describe the design decisions behind the logo. What it represents and how it came to be. Include all other variations of your logo: secondary, submarks and favicons. Provide explicit rules on where and when to use each iteration of the logo. Also give details on dimensions and resolutions.
Depending on where your logo is featured, it is highly likely it won’t work against all backgrounds. Case in point, a white logo isn’t going to work on a white background. A logo needs to be legible and not clash! Provide details of approved different coloured versions of your logo. Specify which logo should be used for light, dark and multi-coloured backgrounds.
It can be helpful to include visuals of correct and incorrect uses of the logo. It makes it clearer to designers what is and isn’t acceptable and they are less likely to go off-piste.
Colour Palette
Set out your brand's colour palette. Have a list of your primary colours (the main colours) and secondary colours (the ones used for accent details).
You must provide hex codes for each colour. Hex codes have a six-digit format, for example, #000000 is the code for pure black.They are the most reliable codes for specifying colours because they provide a standardised and precise representation of colour in digital formats. Referencing them allows all designers and web developers to be on the same page as to the exact hue of a colour, ensuring consistency across different platforms and devices.
In the same way that hex codes ensure consistency across digital mediums, RGB, CMYK and Pantone colour codes are the most reliable in creating consistency of colour across printed mediums. You might want to include them in your brand style guide too, if applicable.
Typography
Introduce all the typefaces (fonts) you use within your branding. Normally there are 2-3. Explain where and when each font should be used. Is it a headline font, a body font or a personality font? Specify the size, spacing and line weight of the fonts (light, normal, bold).
Top tip from web designers: ensure your fonts are web safe (recognised and supported by most devices and web browsers)! If not, provide details of a fallback font. A fallback font is similar to your chosen font. It can be used when your chosen font isn’t recognised, cannot be loaded or is missing certain glyphs (characters).
Photography
As we have said many times before, a picture can paint a thousand words. So too can a photo say a lot about your brand. It is important to define your brand’s photographic style so you can prep photographers or pick stock photography that is appropriate and contributes positively to your brand aesthetic. Here are a few things to think about:
Subject Matter – define your subject matter. Products, landscapes, flora, fauna or a mixture? If you shoot people, what demographic are they?
Style – Should your photos be candid or posed? Professional or casual? Provide reference images as inspiration.
Composition – Are you going for a minimalist look and want negative space to feature in your photos? Or are you looking for jam-packed pictures that create a sense of hustle and bustle? Do you want your logo to be featured in a certain corner of every photo? If so, your photographers need to know to avoid capturing the model or subject matter in said corner. Do you want your models to look directly at the camera or not? Should photos adhere to the golden ratio and rule of thirds?
Colour Palette – Does the stock photography tie in with your brand’s colour palette? How can you bring out your brand’s colour palette in photoshoots? Through locations, wardrobe and props. Is it a warm or cold colour palette?
Saturation – Do you want your photos to be muted or saturated?
Lighting and Shadows – For product photography, natural light may not be available. If so, specify your artificial lighting set up. Product photography also tends to have very minimal shadow – just Google trainers and you will see. In more candid lifestyle shoots, experimenting with shadows can make your photos look more authentic.
Editing – Do you want a natural or glossy finish? Specify any filters or retouching techniques you do and do not permit in the editing phase. This way all photos can get the same treatment.
Photographers are visual people. If you include examples of images that would work and wouldn’t work for your brand, a good photographer will instantly pick up on the finer nuances. Want some further reading? Here is a helpful guide from Shopify on How To Create a Photography Style Guide for Your Brand (With Examples).
Iconography
When we talk about iconography, we are referring to all the symbols and images that replace words or ideas. They are shorthands that convey messages quickly. Think social media icons through to mobile app buttons. Because of the role they play, iconography needs to be easy to understand.
Icons should visually tie in with your brand’s logo and colour palette. If they incorporate letters, they should also align with your brand’s typography. All of the icons used need to be presented as a unified suite. For example, they all need to have an angular design or all have a rounded design, not a mixture of both.
Include a link to your icon library in your brand style guide. If none of the existing icons are adequate for the task at hand, provide instructions on how to create or source any new icons. Again, provide information on dimensions and resolutions for various platforms.
Conclusion
There you have it, a comprehensive outline of everything you need to include in your business’s brand style guide. Start by introducing your brand’s heart. Allow your team to get acquainted with your brand identity through an informative and engaging brand story. Weave in information about your brand’s mission, vision, values, target and personality.
Follow up with a section on your brand’s voice. List the key characteristics of your brand voice, the vocabulary to be used and explain the nuances of tone of voice. Finish off with a section on your brand’s look. Give specific instructions on when and how to use logos, colours, typography, photography and iconography. Remember, keep it short and sweet!
The only thing to add is to make sure that your brand style guide is easily accessible for your team. Use Canva? Canva for Teams is a great piece of software for sharing design assets. Their brand kit feature allows you to keep all your brand assets and info in one place and create on-brand content with a few clicks! Read more about it in our blog: 5 reasons why Canva is a great marketing tool for Small Businesses.
If you are looking to create your own business brand style guide, please feel free to use our free template here. At Made by Dave, we are not only website designers but also provide full visual rebranding services. If you would like help in refining your business branding, we would love to hear from you! Have a browse of our portfolio and if you like what you see, get in touch.