You put a lot of effort into creating a cohesive brand identity and visual identity that represents your company across the internet, in print, and any other customer touchpoint. Now, it’s time to put it to work.
A brand style guide, also simply called a style guide, is your core reference document as you and your team produce social media posts, print brochures, design a website, or make business cards. Here’s how to create a brand style guide of your very own.
A brand style guide is an essential document used by your company and its affiliates to help guarantee your brand remains consistent across all channels. Whether your brand is appearing in a small social media icon or posting a giant billboard along a highway, referring back to the style guide provides assurance that your logo, colors, font, and other core elements remain the same.
This document is also central for quality control. As you grow and more players like creative agencies or suppliers produce branded items on your behalf, the style guide is a way to ensure that your brand reputation and visual identity is maintained in every instance.
Your brand style guide is broken out into these six essential elements:
Depending on what your brand or company does, your brand style guide may also include the following:
Looking to see how it’s done? Here’s how three global companies demonstrate proper brand identity for their employees, affiliates, and partners around the world.
The coffee giant manages a dazzling array of print, digital, and retail assets globally, all of which need to speak in unison. To simplify this mammoth task, the publicly available style guide breaks down the brand’s visual identity into clear and easy-to-navigate components without requiring a login or even a download. A dropdown menu takes you directly to the area you need to reference — no guessing or shuffling through papers here.
The popular workplace chat app maintains a brand compliance hub on its website. This guide, which can be viewed embedded on its website and is available for download, starts off with a detailed brand story and brand values. Then, it flows right into how designers can use all visual assets, including the brand’s logo, colors, and photos.
This email marketing company thought about accessibility first. Mailchimp’s style guide can be found online in an easy-to-use format that anyone can pull from when needed. The brand also has a comprehensive editorial style guide separate from their visual identity guide which showcases their serious investment into how their company speaks to the world.
Now that you have your brand standards set, it’s time to bring them to life. Namecheap’s brand identity maker offers a complete suite of tools you can use to create your own logo with our free Logo Maker, design your own business cards with our Card Maker, and build a website that doesn’t require knowing a stitch of code to bring your brand to life. With a fully fleshed-out brand style guide at the core, each item you produce through Namecheap’s Visual suite will look precisely as intended: as a cohesive element and natural extension of your company’s mission and values. Get started today: Sign up for free now!
A brand style guide is a core reference document used to manage a company’s public image. It serves as a rulebook for what your branding elements look or sound like and how they should be used to promote your business.
To create a simple brand style guide, define your brand identity and establish rules for how you want to convey that identity to the public. Create rules for your brand voice, logos, fonts, colors, and other branding elements, then organize the information in a shareable document.
A style guide should include information about a company’s identity and rules for how to share that information visually and verbally. This includes details about logo usage, color palettes, fonts, brand voice, and the company story.
A style guide should be immediately updated when any branding changes are made, like new logos or product launches. Otherwise, you should review your style guide at least once a year to check if an update is necessary. An annual review also provides an opportunity to check whether your branding has remained consistent with the style guide.
Brand guidelines typically aren’t confidential, but you don’t have to share your style guide publicly. If you want to only want certain people to have access to your style guide, consider storing it in a password-protected document or folder.
From voice to visuals, here’s how to create branding that everyone will recognize.
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