Brand guidelines, also called a brand style guide, are essentially an instruction manual and rule book on how to communicate your brand.
They lay out all the visual details, as well as important notes about a company’s voice, tone, and messaging. Brand guidelines are also called brand style guides, brand guides, or brand bibles. Very simple explanation, right? No fluff.
The best brands have an identity that sticks to the minds of everyone who interacts with the brand, consciously or unconsciously.
For example, this is a cup of?
But how did you know?
The “Coke” logo isn’t on the cup…or on the straw. In fact, this is a plain picture.
This is an example of excellent branding. Coca-Cola has successfully created a brand that is so memorable that you think of Coke when you see a cup shaped like the one in the picture and when you see the colours on the straw.
A brand guideline acts as a single source of truth for your brand, ensuring everyone involved – from designers to photographers to team members – creates materials that look and sound cohesive.
Consistency fosters recognition. When people see your brand elements used consistently, they’ll start to immediately recognize and associate them with your company. Just like you did for Coke.
A well-defined brand guideline will ultimately boost your brand’s authority in the industry by helping you to stand out and maintain a unique voice that cuts through all the noise. This will inspire confidence in your brand in your customers.
Having a clear guide saves time and resources. Designers and marketing teams can avoid confusion, resulting in faster content creation and a smoother workflow
Now that you understand what a brand guideline is and why it’s important, you should understand the elements that should be included in a good one.
The specific components of your brand guideline will vary depending on your brand, but some key elements are:
1. Brand Story & Values: Articulate your brand’s core story, mission, and values. What makes you unique? This helps team members and customers alike to connect with your brand beyond the product or service you’re offering. It’s also your ticket to distinguishing your brand from similar brands.
2. Logo Usage: Your logo is essentially the face of your company as it functions primarily as an identifier. In your guideline, you should specify your logo variations (primary, secondary), acceptable sizes and clear space requirements.
3. Colour Palette: Define your primary, secondary, and accent colours, along with their hex codes for digital and print use.
4. Typography: Detail the fonts you will use for headlines, body text, and any other branding elements.
5. Imagery Style: Describe your preferred image style (e.g. photography, illustration) and any brand-specific guidelines for visuals. For example, if you look through Toast’s website, you’ll notice that the images of our team members are always black and white. That’s our imagery style.
6. Voice & Tone: Define the personality of your brand voice. Are you friendly and casual, or professional and authoritative? This is the voice and tone that your brand will maintain across all platforms and touch points.
7. Messaging: Outline key messaging points and brand language that should consistently be used.
Okay! Now let’s talk about the steps you need to take to create your own brand guideline.
A brand guideline isn’t something that you can jump right into creating. You need to have established some key components that make up the brand guideline first. For example, your logo, your brand story, etc. These are the components that guide you or your design agency as you go through the process of creating your guideline.
You want to make sure that you have a strong understanding of all the parts that make up your brand’s identity by solidifying your brand story, mission, and values. What emotions do you want to evoke? Who are the people in your target audience? These are at the core of your brand’s identity which you want to make sure is clearly outlined in your brand guideline
Collect existing brand elements like logos, colour palettes, and fonts. If you’re lacking any, consider collaborating with a design agency like Toast to create them.
It’s finally time for you to put these together to develop a clear and concise document outlining the elements mentioned above. Consider using visuals and examples alongside explanations. It’s important to make sure that your brand guideline is professional and easy to understand as you’ll most likely be sharing it with third parties like design agencies, marketing agencies etc.
Distribute the brand guideline to relevant in-house teams and stakeholders. Train them on its usage to ensure consistent implementation across projects. This is how your brand guideline starts to become effective. When everyone within your team is on the same page (pun intended) and all have a proper understanding of your brand’s identity, goals, etc, you’ll be sure that you’re all speaking the same language and working towards the same goals. This internal organisation reflects on the outside too as every touch point of your brand from language to imagery becomes cohesive and your brand’s identity finally becomes solid.
Canva’s brand guideline is bright, clear and easy to scheme through. It’s visually appealing, uses clear language, and focuses on core values.
This brand guideline is visually immersive right from the jump. It’s a well outlined document that features the standard categories and more!
Reddit’s logo is a mascot named Snoo. In their brand guideline they introduce snoo and explain their personality along with showing their different facial expressions.
If you’re interested in checking out more guidelines from top brands all over the world, brandguidelines.net and brandingstyleguides.com are great resources that you can check out!
Test your branding knowledge by taking the Branding Quiz below! 😊
Can You Identify These Brands?
Building a strong brand takes effort, but a well-defined brand guideline helps streamline the process and ensures consistency. We hope this post has set you on the right path. If you need some professional help with crafting a great brand guideline for your business, you’re in luck! At Toast Creative Studios, we are specialists in Branding and much more. Check out our portfolio here
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