Building a brand guide is rarely a priority when launching a new Business. Owners tend to focus on the basics of design. What will their logo look like? How will their website be designed? What kind of signage should they invest in right away?

But without a brand guide, these efforts essentially amount to throwing a few ingredients in a pot and hoping it tastes good in the end without any means of evaluating where the “recipe” might have gone wrong or replicating your results. Maybe that first batch is tasty, but there is no guarantee that the next interaction will be.

Brand guides solve the problem. They take time and thoughtfulness to create, but they'll save you an upset stomach (to say the least) later down the line.

Defining the Brand Guide

A brand guide, also known as a brand style guide or brand manual, is a document that outlines all the elements of your brand. It serves as a rulebook, ensuring that every visual and communicative aspect of a brand remains cohesive and aligned with its identity.

From the logo to the color palette, typography, and tone of voice, a brand guide acts as a roadmap, offering clarity on how to represent the brand across various mediums.

How Brand Guides Build Consistency

Consistency is the key to building a successful brand. Familiar and reliable imagery, tone, and behaviors allow you to:

Establish and strengthen Brand Recognition
Create well-defined tactics and elements whose performance can be tested and measured
Generate new and highly qualified leads
Encourage and engage repeat visitors and customers

Brand guides are especially helpful when you're just starting to build out your team. It gives new hires in a marketing department or otherwise a framework for their independent efforts. It becomes more important as your team grows, offering a reference that allows your team to work more efficiently. And if you're hiring outside contractors (like myself) to help with specific projects, you can limit revision cycles by providing clear expectations.

Though there is something to be said for shocking the senses of your audience, disruptive efforts still work best when wrapped in familiar imagery. An explosive campaign does you little good if the impressions created are not easily associated with your brand.

In a world bombarded with stimuli, a brand must speak a consistent language to cut through the noise. Whether a potential customer stumbles upon a social media post, a print ad, or the Company's website, the brand guide ensures that they experience a seamless and recognizable visual and communicative journey.

What Goes into a Brand Guide

So you're ready to create a brand guide for your company. Now what?

For many business owners, the entire concept may feel foreign or overwhelming. That's completely understandable. Without a background in marketing or design, it can be difficult to identify what information and decisions go into building a useful brand guide. As a general rule, you should focus on the following areas.

Logo Usage Guidelines

The logo is the face of a brand, and its consistent presentation is paramount. A brand guide provides specifications on logo variations, minimum sizes, clear space requirements, and acceptable backgrounds. This ensures that whether the logo graces a business card or a billboard, it retains its integrity and impact.

sample logo array

This piece of the puzzle is best accompanied by a folder containing approved versions of the logo for team members or contractors to use. This typically includes:

Black, white, and brand color versions
Different configurations, including standard, stacked, square, and image-based
Large, medium, and small sizes for each configuration and color
Each option as different file types (.gif, .png, .jpg, .eps, etc.)

By offering such a folder in conjunction with the logo section of your brand guide, you make it easier for your team and contractors to follow the rules. It also makes it less likely that someone will attempt to follow the rules in their own image editing program and fall short.

Color Palette

Colors evoke emotions and play a pivotal role in brand recall. A brand guide meticulously outlines the primary and secondary color palettes, including the exact hex codes or Pantone colors. This ensures that the chosen colors remain consistent across all mediums.

The number of colors in each set depends on your needs. They can include specifications on where and when each color should be used, as well. This is specifically relevant in web design. Your designers and programmers will want a set of rules to standardize formatting site-wide.

Sample color palette

The range of colors you define in your brand guide will often be guided by the type of company you are, the scope of likely design challenges, and (frankly) the extent to which you care. I often recommend that, in addition to defining a traditional set of primary and secondary colors, you outline standard, dark, and light shades for each of the colors in the rainbow. This can prove particularly useful when working with charts, infographics, and videos.

Typography Standards

The fonts chosen for a brand's communication carry significant weight. They can indicate everything from whimsy to gravitas when selected appropriately. Even better? Consistent typography can increase brand recognition by as much as 80%!

But it's not just about brand synchronicity.

An important consideration is rendering. That really cool font you just found? If it's not a standard font, it may get converted to one for some visitors. Though it's always a good thing when your audience can, ya know, see your content, this automatic adjustment may introduce other complications. Load times may increase. Layouts may be skewed. Your written content may not be consistent with text included in graphics and videos.

It's also about accessibility. Not everyone sees the world the same way. Vision impairments and color blindness may make your website difficult to navigate or parse. While you might like how something looks, it's important to remember that the way you present your brand isn't about your preferences or needs; it's about your audience.

Fortunately, guidance exists that can help with your font selection. As HubSpot explains:

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is an international accessibility standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The guidelines specify how websites and products should be designed to ensure accessibility.
Regarding font selection, WCAG recommends using fonts with a x-height of at least 1.5 times the font size. This will ensure that the text is legible and can be read by people with visual impairments.
WCAG also states that accessibility fonts should have a high contrast ratio, meaning they must be at least 4.5:1 for regular text and 3:1 for large text (approximately 18pt). Additionally, accessibility-optimized fonts should have a wide character spacing and clear distinction between similar-looking characters, such as “l” and “1”.

And frankly, some fonts just bug people. Designers, in particular, are known for expressing their distaste for certain fonts. But they don't just hate Comic Sans for no reason. Research consistently shows that typography can directly influence emotion, impressions, and receptiveness to an argument.

Once you've taken into consideration your general brand characteristics, Your brand guide should define:

What fonts are acceptable
Where each font should be used
How each font should be formatted based on location, including color, weight, size, line height, letter spacing, and more

Worth noting is that the font used in your logo need not be included in the typography section of your brand guide. You may say which font was used in the logo section, but remember: you don't want people trying to recreate logo imagery. Identifying that font will be of greater importance to designers than anyone else.

Imagery and Photography

Images convey a brand's narrative, and a brand guide dictates the style and tone of photography and imagery that aligns with the brand's ethos. You might indicate that all graphics utilize a flat design style. Perhaps it's important that all photos be in color.

You may also want to outline when, where, and how images and photography may be used. Examples include:

All blog posts must include a featured image sized 900x500px
Pages should include a minimum of x images and a maximum of y images
Photographs must include linked credits to the image source

This is also a good section to indicate acceptable image sources. While paid options like Shutterstock or Dreamstime may offer a wider and richer photo selection, unpaid options like Unsplash and Pixabay are also great resources. In any case, identifying options can help you dodge potential copyright issues down the line.

Voice and Tone

The way a brand communicates is as crucial as its visual representation. A brand guide establishes the tone of voice that should be used in all communication – from web copy to emails, social media content, press releases, and beyond.

Think about voice and tone definition as a description of how your brand would talk if they were an actual person. Are you formal and direct or snarky and casual? Do you lean more on research and outside quotes or anecdotes and metaphors? Are you detailed and expansive or short and sweet when explaining an idea?

This brand guide section can be one of the hardest to tackle. Want to mix it up a little bit? Consider having a voice actor offer an audio example of the tone you're shooting for in written content.

Collateral Design Templates

A brand guide often includes templates for various collateral designs. These templates maintain a cohesive look and feel across all materials, allowing for easy replication while adhering to the established guidelines. These templates can prove exceptionally helpful in facilitating the onboarding process for your team and managing team member communications with the public. Common examples include:

Email signatures
Slide decks
Proposals and contracts
General email marketing layouts
Business cards
Social media graphics

That list is obviously not exhaustive. Which templates your brand needs depends entirely on your market, value proposition, and operations. You may find the need to create new templates as your company grows and evolves.

The Bottom Line

In a world saturated with choices, a brand guide serves as a lighthouse, guiding businesses through the stormy seas of competition. It ensures that every interaction with the brand, be it visual or verbal, is a reflection of its core identity.

By establishing a cohesive and recognizable presence, a brand guide becomes the cornerstone of a brand's journey. It improves brand recognition and authority along with lead attraction, engagement, and conversion. Is it easy to build? No. Is it necessary for enduring brand success? Absolutely.

So the next time you marvel at a brand's seamless and consistent image, know that, behind the scenes, a well-crafted brand guide is orchestrating the symphony of visual and communicative elements, ensuring that the brand's story is told with clarity, impact, and unwavering consistency.

StartMotionMedia

The Brass Tacks of Brand Guides

Defining the Brand Guide

How Brand Guides Build Consistency