Brand Style Guide: How To Create A Perfect One?: When we talk about building a memorable brand, we talk about consistency. When we go to the supermarket to buy our favorite coffee, we can see it from several meters away, among all the available coffee offerings.
What happens with all brands: the best remain in our brain because their attractive presence defines by the recurrence of the same logo, fonts, colors, and pictures.
Once we see them long enough, they become instantly recognizable, giving us a distinct sense of reliability and security. And one of the essential points in creating a consistent brand is creating a brand style guide.
What is a Brand Style Guide?
A style guide consists of a document that establishes the guidelines, provides all the details related to its graphic use, and guides the marketing area, graphic designers, commercials, web developers, and social media administrators.
The community and even the packaging departments should stay and present a unified vision of the brand to the public.
These guidelines ultimately govern the composition, design, and overall appearance of a company’s brand. And the best companies, the most recognized, generally show consistency in the messages they transmit, in the use of colors, tone, images, and all aspects in which they interact with the brand.
If you crave to know a little more about the use of colors and their importance, we recommend reading: Psychology of color: what do your brand’s colors say?
Basic guidelines of a style guide
Now we will see the basic guidelines that every Style Guide of a brand should have and how they influence it.
What Is The Purpose Of Branding?
Many companies think that the statement of Purpose or a Mission as a company is internal communication. But it is not like that. The purpose of a company should be the compass of the brand’s Style Guide. A statement ensures that every piece of content created for the brand is geared toward the same goal.
A statement of purpose can guide several things:
- Blog content.
- Paid or sponsored content.
- Ads in Google Ads.
- Social networks.
- Audiovisual content.
This article will help you develop a unique and memorable brand identity.
What Is The Customer Profile (Buyer Persona)?
The buyer persona or the presentation of the ideal client for each business. It is a profile prepared with a series of details related to the ideal client’s age, gender, position, and personal or professional challenges. For this reason, the definition of the buyer persona should also appear in the brand’s style guide. It is your target audience and, therefore, defines for whom the brand creates and publishes content.
The buyer persona can guide:
- The content of the blog.
- Ads in Google Ads.
- Social networks.
- Audiovisual content.
What Should Be The Color Palette?
A color palette is the group of colors that defines and guides the brand’s design in its visual pieces. The color palette can be as straightforward or as elaborate as you like, although two or three are the predominant colors.
Regardless of the colors you use for a color palette, make sure to identify their HEX, CMYK, or RGB color codes.
These codes consist of the same letters and numbers to ensure that we always use the same hue, brightness, contrast, and exact hue to associate with our brand. These color codes can be seen in most of the available photo editing or design software.
The color palette can guide the creation of:
- The logo.
- Website design.
- Print ads.
- Social networks.
- Audiovisual content.
- Packaging
What Should Be The Typography Of Your Brand?
Typography is another visual element of a brand’s style guide and goes far beyond the typeface used in the company’s logo. Typographic guidelines can also define a blog’s layout, articles, links, and the entire website.
Because as we have already said, the purpose of the brand style guide is to define all the various visual elements of a company that, when combined, explain the entire brand as it is recognized.
Brand Tone Of Voice
The tone of voice is a consistent way to convey your brand message to your audience. It is part of an expression that, together with images, define the brand identity. In some style manuals, they call the tone of voice as best communication practices.
Words are an essential part of a brand’s identity, and when used effectively, it helps shape the way the brand is perceived and the way potential customers interact with it.
Therefore, in addition to defining how the brand looks (images), it is also essential to explain how the brand speaks, a definitive style for writing and speaking.
These Are The Ten Examples Of Brand Style Guides:
1. Medium.com
Medium is a publishing platform where people can read relevant and inspiring stories on the topics that involve them and share ideas with the world.
From a graphic point of view, Medium emphasizes both typography and color in its brand style guide. It also includes details related to the company’s “purpose” and “product principles.” You can review the complete brand guide here.
2. Starbucks
For example, Starbucks calls this document the “brand expression guide” and demonstrates a high-level summary of how Starbucks’ brand appears to live.
In the first several pages of this guide, you will find what “brand expression” really is and some case studies. By looking at these specific examples, it is possible to understand how different brand elements (or expressions) should design various applications.
The core elements of Starbucks are:
- Logo: how to use the logo.
- Color: primary and complementary green color palette.
- Voice: the use of a functional and expressive voice.
- Typography: fonts for headlines, body text, and accents.
- Illustration: How to use texture, photo collage, and other graphics.
- Photography: examples of the artistic, editorial, and intentional style.
The fantastic website is another excellent example of an online manual. Having a dedicated website like this one, displaying typography, grids, and colors, helps ensure brand consistency.
You can review the complete brand guide here.
3. Skype
The well-known tool that allows people to create and get free voice and video calls across the Internet adopting a computer, web browser, or mobile phone, also has a style guide for its brand.
Skype, unlike Medium, focuses mainly on the writing and description of its products and services.
As well as important visibility of the logo. Check out the full Skype branding guide here.
4. Uber
On the other hand, Uber calls its standards document “a system,” made up of nine core elements.
The system displays such an efficient brand identity to use, flexible across applications, and capable of presenting localized content in a globally consistent manner.
The nine core elements of your brand manual are:
- Logo.
- Colour.
- Composition.
- Iconography.
- Illustration.
- Movement.
- Photography.
- Voice tone.
- Typography.
The system is extensive and includes everything from brand history to applying the logo, typography, and colors to create new graphics.
You can review the complete brand guide here.
5. Spotify
The Spotify style guide focuses on graphic design best practices and does a great job of outlining your assets’ use cases. Spotify’sSpotify’s seamless user experience is built on its unique design language and has been key to its dominance of the market.
The Spotify style guide provides perfect examples of:
- How not to use its iconography.
- Color matching problems.
- The manipulation of the logo.
- Size restrictions, among others.
Spotify knows that its brand is used by people who do not work for them and uses this guide to create limits around the description of the use of its graphic pieces. And to make sure they are put to fair use and ensure consistency, your style guide provides downloadable files for your various logos and brands.
At first glance, the Spotify style guide may seem simple and very green, but several details allow the brand to give a visual identity. Check out the Spotify style guide here.
6. Jamie Oliver
Renowned chef and television host Jamie Oliver also has a brand style manual. It comprises everything you need to know about branding that should be used in product packaging, marketing support, and point of sale, ensuring that it remains consistent at all times.
Using a brand correctly is extremely important for what we want to communicate.
In particular, Jamie Oliver’sOliver’s brand guide is exceptionally comprehensive, ranging from the logo’s location to the packaging of the cookware it offers. It also includes a broad palette of colors and their specific use.
Check out Jamie Oliver’sOliver’s full branding guide here.
7.Cisco
Cisco is as widespread a brand as its product and service offering. That is why it is essential to have clear guidelines for using your visual and graphic resources.
The Cisco Style Guide is not just a guide. It is an interactive brand book. The company brings website visitors page by page through its vision, mission, strategy, and even its brand promise before displaying its logo to users and allowing them to type using its proprietary typeface.
Since Cisco is a communications technology company, your guide has examples of both audio and video pieces. Check out the full Cisco guide here.
8.Netflix
The Netflix brand style guide is exceptionally minimalist regarding its visual identity, the logo’s versions, the colors, and how to apply it. And like several of the cases we’ve seen, this guide also teaches us what to avoid and what the rules are to ensure the proper use of brand assets.
Netflix primarily focuses on treating its logo. The company gives a simplistic set of rules governing the size, spacing, and placement of its famous uppercase typeface, as well as a unique color code for its classic red logo.
Check out Netflix’sNetflix’s full branding guide here.
9. NASA
The NASA Brand Book is as official and complicated as you think. At 220 pages, the guide describes countless logo locations, color uses, and supporting designs. And yes, NASA’sNASA’s space shuttles have their own brand rules. Check out the complete guide to the brand here.
10. Audi
Audi recently redesigned its corporate identity to be a digital world leader, probably one of the most comprehensive of all.
The Audi guidelines cover nine items:
- Rings (logo).
- Slogan or descent.
- Colors
- Typography
- Design structure
- Images
- Illustration
- Icons
- Animation
But that’s just the basics because it also has sections with guides on the user interface, media, corporate sound, movies, and more.
It is also possible to find what Audi calls “Brand Appearance,” which explains the principles of how to use the brand elements, with many examples and instructions that convey the essentials and provide inspiration for ideas.
Check out the Audi style guide here.
We can call it brand guidelines, style guides, or brand books, but they all suggest standards that guide us to use the brand’s elements.
The design, printing, or manufacture of brand elements depends on a set of standards and guidelines given by this crucial document, ultimately helping maintain brand consistency and save time, money, and frustration.