The goal of a good style guide is to ensure that the strength of your brand is consistent at every level. From the logo, website, social media posts and email newsletters, to physical products like a business card and packaging. Every experience a customer has with your brand should be consistent and true to your brand values. In other words, a recognizable brand.

Give your brand a consistent start

The other bonus of having your own style guide for your business is that it makes your life easier! When it's time for a new promo on Instagram, your next newsletter or a blog post, you'll know what to do. It tells you all about what colors, fonts and type of images to use which will make the design process so much faster. An added benefit is that if you hire a freelancer or designer for your business, you can give them the style guide directly to refer to. That way you can be sure that everything they produce is also in line with your current branding.

Need logo or corporate identity design? Click here!

So what do you need for a good style guide?

OF COURSE A LOGO

The requirements for your primary logo are as follows; it should be clear and simple, work in color and black and white, and be recognizable at small sizes. Your primary logo is what is primarily used on your website, business cards and, for example, your clothing.

In some cases, a professional designer will also provide alternate versions of your logo. These variations are necessary if you know that the primary logo does not look good on certain expressions. For example, a circular or horizontal layout may be needed for a garment bag or to print pens. However, it will depend on your needs how many logo versions you need. However, you do need to make sure they are consistent so as not to dilute your brand look too much.

A sub-brand can be a simplified version of the primary logo that can be used on secondary brand elements, such as a favicon for your website, or an identity brand somewhere on a physical product.

COLOR PALLETS

Equally important for recognition is your color palette. This matches the colors of your logo or the look and feel of your brand. If used properly, it can be applied to all touchpoints in your company to create a cohesive brand. The colors you use are meant to evoke a certain mood or feeling in your target audience. You want them to respond emotionally to the colors you use, so color selection should take color psychology into account.

My suggestion is to have a primary color palette of 2 to 4 colors. The secondary color palette contains up to 10 more, depending on your brand. In your style guide, define each color with values for print (CMYK) and digital projects (RGB, HEX). Also note the Pantone colors, if any, with their assigned values.

OWN TYPOGRAPHY

Usually a brand has 2-3 different fonts that are used consistently in all design elements. Too many fonts = confusing, messy and definitely not consistent! So it is important to identify which fonts you use when in your brand and all expressions. Also look carefully at how they should be used in combination with each other. by the way, it is recommended to make use of Google's immense free font library (Google Fonts). In fact, Google's fonts are also free to use on your website.

You need to make sure that, as with the color palette, the fonts reflect your brand's core values. For example, if you sell luxury men's watches, you're not going to use a cheerful, flowery font. Rather, you're going to go for a bold, classic font.

PATTERNS & TEXTURES

If your branding lends itself to the use of patterns or textures used as backgrounds, for example, make sure these are in the style guide. Also show how these patterns are combined with text and other elements. For example, patterns can be used well in social media graphics.

PHOTOGRAPHY

The photography you use will also set the tone of your visual branding, and you need to make sure it is consistent. In your style guide, specify the style and type of images to be used. Defining elements for photography are lighting (are they light or dark), contrast (high or low), and hue and color grading. In terms of image type, you can still consider whether the images are focused on faces, expression, expression and, for example, the setting (outdoors, indoors, on location or in a studio).

WEB ELEMENTS

Favicon - can be the sub-brand of your logo.
Social - your social media icons should be consistent with your branding style.
Icons - custom iconography can also really differentiate your brand from other brands.
Titles - all custom sidebar headings should all have the same design style.

GRAPHICAL ELEMENTS

You can also have some set illustrations or graphics that appear throughout your branding, include them in your style guide and specify where and how they are used.

How do you create your own style guide for your brand?

If you already have all the elements of your brand in place, you can ask a designer to put together a style guide for you. A professional designer will share all relevant designs with you during the design process. Once you have created your visual identity yourself, you can use different software programs to create your own style guide.

I recommend the use of Adobe InDesign, because it works well with both text and images. Suppose you are going to design your own logo then Adobe Illustrator is king. If you have no skills in InDesign or Illustrator, you could try the free tool Canva. Here you can upload all your branding elements. Of course, this is especially useful if you often use Canva to create images for your business. Of course, you can also just use a program like Word or Google docs.

You can go one step further by creating a branding guide for each of your social media platforms. This can be helpful to see the differences between each of your social media platforms.

If you don't yet have all the elements of your visual branding, you can hire a professional designer or agency that knows a lot about branding. After all, it's often not the case that if someone can create a beautiful logo they can also design the rest of your brand. Building a visual identity based on your company values, personality, image and tone of voice is an art in itself. So pay close attention to this.

Need help setting up your own style guide? Let us know, because we specialize in this.

Need logo or corporate identity design? Click here!