What A Style Guide Can Do For Your Brand

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What A Style Guide Can Do For Your Brand

Your brand style guide communicates your company’s design standards to your whole group. Having this document to reference for expected standards will make the lives of your designers, writers, and developers much easier and give them a solid framework to use as a starting point for their work.

Style guides can support marketing initiatives by ensuring that all messaging is relevant and related to your brand’s goals. Referencing a brand style guide ensures that content distinguishes a brand from its competitors, and is cohesive. This cohesion is important because it helps establish a strong brand voice that resonates with the audience, which is essential for building brand awareness. Over time, that awareness and consistency build trust.

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What’s In A Brand Style Guide

A style guide should include all the important guidelines for your brand’s identity and voice, especially the elements listed below.

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The Logo And Any Derivatives

Be sure to include the logo, along with its corresponding color formats for web and print. Instructions about the logo’s minimum size, and size in relationship to other assets, like taglines, should also be included to maintain the integrity of a brand’s visual identity during reproduction.

It’s also a good idea to include logo treatments that designers should avoid. Ensuring that logos are always applied consistently protects your brand equity.

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Typefaces

Any typefaces used within the logo and marketing material should be a part of the style guide, along with their weights and a web-safe alternative, if necessary. Be sure to distinguish between fonts used for titles vs body copy, and include formatting preferences for copy.

 

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Conclusion

A style guide is essential to keep your brand identity consistent, recognizable, and ownable, even as several different people develop content for your brand. Since a style guide defines the guidelines for maintaining a brand’s identity, it’s important to spend the time and resources to get it right.

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