When it comes to branding, you need effective strategies and consistency. But the question here is how to maintain consistency when you have several elements involved in your business, multiple partners, or agencies that design for your brand? The answer to this is a ‘brand style guide.’ Look at any brand style guide. You’ll find everything from the business origin, mission, future goals to typography, color palette, custom logo design, content, imagery, and more associated with that brand.
There are plenty of examples of companies out there that have rebranded and invested a considerable amount, time, and effort in developing a style guide, indicating the importance of a style guide for a brand. You can check out these style guides to get an idea while creating one for your business. However, having a stylebook helps different departments within the company operate in unity and follow the brand’s pattern.
Keep popularity aside for once and think why brands like Nike, Apple, Coca-Cola, and others are easily recognizable globally? The answer is they are consistent in their design, color, typography, and other vital elements. Such consistency is only possible with a thorough style guide. Here, this blog guide will help you create a brand’s style guide that everyone will love.
Let’s dive into the guide.
Keep Your Logo Consistent
The most crucial element in any brand is a custom logo design. It is one thing that makes people recognize your brand. If you want people to identify your brand in a glimpse, you need to remember that wherever you use your logo, keep its color, font style, and design consistent.
Think of Facebook or Coca-Cola logo. Do you ever see the Facebook logo in another color rather than blue or Coca-Cola logo in another font style? The answer is never because these brands never made any changes.
Learning here is building a style guide; it’s important to set guidelines regarding your logo and follow them consistently. Besides, you need to mention the perfect color variation in your style guide as you have to use your logo on different platforms.
It will help make your brand easily recognizable and make sure that nobody will misuse your logo.
Write An Appealing, Enthralling Brand Story
Every successful brand that inspires you has its unique and engaging story. Does your brand have a story that influences the masses? No? Then you are not going in the right direction. If you’re confused about the term ‘brand story,’ so let’s clear it for you.
A brand story defines the company’s mission, goals, and values it offers to the customer. Besides, it also highlights the brand’s background. Every company has its style of writing a brand story, but all stories focus on three elements, which include mission, vision, and values.
A brand story should not exaggerate things. It should be on-point, defines brand personality in a unique style, and covers all the crucial elements in an engaging way. Don’t try to be fancy. Keep it simple and creative.
Add Your Brand’s Color Palette
Earlier, brands used simple colors while creating a custom logo design and didn’t focus on setting different color variations for their logos.
With modernization and digitalization, brands are now more conscious about design and colors. For the safe side, brands use multiple color schemes and keep them consistent in the communication.
Therefore, it’s essential to mention color palette associated with your brand. Whether you have one core brand color and some secondary colors or multiple color combinations, it must be mentioned in your style guide.
Add Typography
The most underestimated element in any brand’s success is typography. Most businesses don’t pay the required attention to typography while creating a brand style guide.
Remember, typography is something that can either make your brand look impressive or cheaper. So, be wise while picking the font styles and add them to your style guide.
Typography is everywhere, from your brand’s custom logo design to all the marketing collateral use for branding. You can’t use the same font everywhere.
So, it’s essential to select the suitable font styles that best suit your brand. Once you choose all the font styles, define their purpose and usage in the guide. It will bring consistency to your communication.
Consistent Brand Voice
To make your brand communication effective, it’s essential to keep your tone consistent. You should set your brand voice that easily connects with your audience and matches the brand’s personality.
Once you find the right voice for your brand, use it consistently in your collaterals. Again, consistency is necessary, and to keep your brand voice consistent, define it in your style guide.
Take a look at the Shopify style guide to get an idea of how to smarty define your brand voice in the style guide. Shopify has mentioned all the do’s and don’ts in its guide.
