Brands become recognizable by providing a cohesive experience to their target audience. This includes what you see, hear, feel about the brand. The brand identity and positioning align with the business values and objectives, which are neatly documented in the brand style guide.
Brand style guide, also called brand guidelines is a guide/handbook to keep the brand communication (the look and feel, the voice) seamless across various channels and communication touchpoints. It is a guide that tells you how to present the brand to the world and keep up the brand consistency.
In this blog, we’ll look at the detailed list of dos and don’ts when creating a brand style guide for a business.
Understanding Brand Style Guides
Brand style guides are rule books everyone in the company follows, that provides an outline for visual and written elements of branding. This ensures consistency in communication.
Critical Components of a Brand Style Guide
The brand’s success depends on how well you identify and incorporate the critical components in the brand style guide. The company’s mission statement is the first element to consider. Everything you say or do should align with who you are or what your business represents. Then, consider the buyer persona. What you offer has to suit their preferences.
Brand Identity Elements
· Typography Guidelines
Typography guidelines refer to the fonts you use for the logo, packaging, and other forms of communication. Do you want to use a single typeface or different ones for different channels? Make a list of acceptable fonts and their variations. Mention recommended sizes for different types of text/ communication. Specify the alignment options, spacing, and usage formats for online and offline purposes.
Color Palette
The color palette refers to the selected set of colors associated with the brand. What are the brand’s primary and secondary colors? Why are these colors used? What do they represent for the business? Mention the color codes for digital and print separately to avoid mismatch. The color palette is used across multiple platforms (letterheads, TV ads, and social media), so choose the ones that best align with your brand.
Logo Usage
The business logo is a vital part of your image and brand identity. The brand style guide should provide detailed instructions about logo usage to ensure consistent implementation across the channels and touchpoints. How do the dimensions change based on the channel and purpose? How much white space should be around the logo? Mention how the logo should and should not be used, along with the differences between using it online and offline.
Voice and Tone
The brand voice and tone are considered the verbal identity of your business and impact how the target audience perceives you. The tonal guidelines should define the brand’s voice and the tone in which a message is expressed, explaining why they are chosen and how they support the brand personality and values. This helps to maintain a consistent brand tone and messaging across all platforms. Tanishq for instance, uses a communication tone of sophistication and class which reflects across all mediums and channels.
Imagery Guidelines
The imagery guidelines deal with the infographics, photos, iconography, and illustrations that establish your brand identity. Provide precise details about the type of pictures you want to include in the brand marketing strategies and what you want to avoid. You can also design a copyrighted illustration exclusively for your business.
Dos: Best Practices for Creating a Brand Style Guide
Conducting Comprehensive Brand Research
Brand research is non-negotiable when creating a brand style guide. Assign a team to study the industry’s different branding techniques, logo designs, positioning strategies, etc., before coming up with a unique version for your business. Use the research inputs to create a clear brand identity strategy, including the mission, vision, values, etc.
Defining Clear Brand Guidelines
Be highly specific about the brand guidelines. There should be no chance of misunderstanding or confusion. The brand style guide has to be as detailed as possible. This will keep brand communication aligned with the guidelines and bring consistency.
Don’ts: Common Mistakes to Avoid in Brand Style Guide Creation
Being Overly Restrictive
Brand consistency is important, and aligning with industry standards is also necessary. However, that doesn’t imply that your guidelines should be restrictive to the point where the teams cannot be creative or innovative. The brand style guide should have enough space for adjustments.
Neglecting Flexibility and Adaptability
When you are rigid and particular about the brand elements, you neglect flexibility. In competitive markets, brands should be constantly adaptable and flexible enough to offer variety without disturbing their core brand style guide. One of the biggest branding mistakes is to avoid adaptability.
Ignoring Audience Preferences
The brand style guide is implemented across all the brand touchpoints to create a memorable customer journey and increase the acquisition rate. Hence, ignoring what your target audiences prefer can give opposite results. The brand style guide should align with what and how the target audience wants from your business.
Failing to Update and Maintain the Guide
Creating the brand guidelines is a time-consuming process. The style guide must be updated based on market reactions and corrections. Test, monitor, and evaluate the policies and add the results to the document. This helps determine the right time for rebranding and minimizes the risk of errors.
Disregarding Consistency Across Platforms
While flexibility and creativity are essential, branding consistency is also vital. Your branding elements have to be the same on different platforms, channels, packaging, etc., so that you reinforce the brand personality and message. Eliminate contradictory instructions from the style guide. Find a balance between consistency and flexibility.
Implementing Your Brand Style Guide
Training Team Members on Brand Guidelines
The branding guidelines should be easily accessible to all business teams. Don’t just inform them about the guidelines; actively train them to understand the details. Discuss the elements and how they can optimize the use of branding resources to implement the strategies and achieve the results.
Integrating the Guide Across All Brand Touchpoints
Branding iteration is a cyclic process where the brand elements are repeatedly, consistently, and coherently used across all touchpoints to achieve business objectives. It streamlines decision-making about new product development, packaging, marketing, or customer service.
Seeking Feedback and Iteration as Needed
Businesses cannot create branding best practices without feedback from employees and customers. Use methods like surveys, opinion polls, quizzes, feedback forms, etc., to determine whether your branding elements align with industry and market preferences and how to correct mistakes.
Case Studies: Examples of Effective Brand Style Guides
Spotify
The global music streaming giant has a meticulously crafted style guide that helps it maintain a consistent, dynamic and recognizable identity. The use of colour not only ensures visual consistency but vividly represents Spotify’s brand ethos of vibrancy, energy and accessibility.
What we like about it: Spotify’s use of bold colourful backgrounds with contrasting text and images creates a dynamic visual experience that aligns with the brand’s mission to make music discovery and listening an exciting and engaging experience.
The colour palette is designed not just for aesthetic appeal but also for accessibility. The sufficient contrast between text and background colours makes the content easily readable for all users, including those with visual impairments.
WeWork
WeWork’s core philosophy is to make physical gatherings and social interactions within a physical space possible. Aligning with this ethos, their branding style, values and design language, all are a cohesive set of principles applied to architecture, the spirit of community and visual design principles.
What we like about it: WeWork’s brand assets and design elements follow the tenets of balancing structure and flexibility. While black and white are their primary colours, every possible vibrant hue is a part of their colour palette to reflect the brand’s innovative spirit. Further, the ‘snap-to-fit’ layout guidelines underscore the brand’s ethos.
PhonePe
The app is compatible with Android and iOS devices. The company has developed a library of 50+ illustrations with inclusive designs. Users can also customize their avatars to align with the brand’s guidelines.
What we like about it: While most style guides have illustrations, this wows us with customizable designs that are inclusive, from skin colours to hair styles to clothing, to age and disabilities, they’ve got everything covered.
Tools and Resources for Brand Style Guide Creation
Design Software and Templates
In today’s technologically advanced world, branding tools are highly effective in simplifying and creating a brand style guide. Various software applications, like Canva, Bynder, Brandkit, Filecamp, etc., are available for designing, documenting, editing, upgrading, and maintaining the style guide. The branding audit tool is invaluable for analyzing your branding strengths and weaknesses.
Collaboration Platforms
Choose branding tools that allow collaborations between team members to facilitate more accessible and seamless communication. Canva for Teams, Corebook°, Marq, etc., are well- known platforms businesses use for this purpose. These tools enable consistent brand transformation.
Professional Services and Consultants
Small businesses struggle to achieve brand success as they compete with large, established brands. However, getting professional advice from expert branding companies and consultants can bridge the gap and create a level playing field. It also helps businesses avoid the common pitfalls affecting their branding strategies.
Conclusion
Creating a brand style guide is a multi-stage process that requires careful planning, research, testing, evaluation, and implementation. Follow Never Too Small To Brand for inspiration and insights in branding and marketing to elevate your brand in the competitive environment. Whether you are a brand in Bangalore or a Tier 2 city, you are never too small to brand!