Why All Brands Must Have a Style Guide
Having a brand style guide is essential for all brand communications and marketing efforts. It serves to communicate your business design standards to all departments, vendors, partners and customers/clients. Most importantly, it ensures a consistent dialogue to your stakeholders and followers. It’s important to have a strong, clear brand voice that effectively resonates with your audience and your potential audience. This guide will begin to build brand awareness and consistent communications across all channels, which in turn will build trust, advocacy and increased following.
What should be in a style guide?
- Logos: colors, placements and formats for print and web
- This includes instructions about size and placement for logo in any created pieces will help promote consistency wherever your brand is seen and preserve the integrity of your brand’s appearance.
- Typefaces
- This includes permitted (and not permitted) colors, weights and formatting. It’s important to take into consideration “web-friendly” alternatives where there is live text.
- This includes permitted (and not permitted) colors, weights and formatting. It’s important to take into consideration “web-friendly” alternatives where there is live text.
- Colors
- A quick style guide is meant to serve as a reference for anyone working on your team or for your team. You should have a list of brand permitted colors (and not permitted) to ensure consistency in all created marketing or brand communication materials.
- Note: Always have colors and color equivalents across (i.e. hex, CMYK or Pantone)
- Web Styles
- Include an overview of button styles, page structure, form elements and permitted icons.
- Photography
- Examples of ideal photography to illustrate composition, lighting and color scheme. This provides any outside vendor or collaborator a visual indicator of what they can and cannot do.
- Example Materials
- Be sure to include some sample materials to illustrate the above mentioned assets
- This can include flyers, web page mock-ups, corporate identity materials, etc.
- Be sure to include some sample materials to illustrate the above mentioned assets
Conclusion
There are several components to include in a style guide. The above is typically a “standard” basic set of the details needed to offer clear direction. The bigger the brand and the more sub-brands/divisions a company has, the more detailed the style guide needs to be. Keeping a brand’s visual appearance consistent across channels and on all platforms of communication is essential for maintaining a clear voice and strong positioning. To learn more, please contact us at ideas@fioreinspires.com[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]