How to Create a Brand Style Guide

When it comes to marketing your small business, it is important to have a strong and consistent brand that your customers can become familiar with. It’s this familiarity with your brand that customers come to expect from you and it will make all the difference when it comes to converting customers from strangers into loyal customers. At K2 Analytics, we focus on bringing your brand to life online where your customers spend most of their time. We’re able to execute this because we ensure that your brand has a clear and consistent voice that all begins when we work together to create a brand style guide. Here’s how to start yours!

What Is a Brand Style Guide?

A brand style guide is exactly what it sounds like! It’s a guide that takes the form of a PowerPoint presentation or deck that outlines what your brand is and how it is supposed to be used in order to consistently deliver the same message.

Every successful company that has managed to become a household brand has guidelines for how its brand is to be used and how it is not to be used. This allows for instant brand recognition. Take Nike, Adidas, and Google for example; all household names and you were able to imagine what their logos looked like without any information beyond their name. That’s because they strictly follow their brand guide.

Creating Your Branding Guide

When you set out to create your branding guide, you will need to have a few things: a logo, signature color schemes, typography, and rules for how to use them all. It’s quite simple though, let’s break it down further.

Start With Your Story

The first slide of your brand style guide should tell the story of who you are as a brand. What is your name, what do you do, why do you do it. For max effect, you want to include the ethos behind your brand. Include your mission statement and bullet point your Mission, Vision, and Values.

Use Logo Guidelines

When it comes to how your logo is to be displayed on any material or medium whether it’s on social media, on flyers, or any other marketing material you should have examples of Dos and Don’ts.

Be as specific as possible when determining how big the logo has to be, what color is, where and how you can display it, and so on. This will create consistency.

Include a Color Palette

Including your color palette in your brand style guide makes it easy for designers to find your brand’s core brand colors along with color hex codes and RBG values. This will specify which color combinations you always want to use when designing for your brand.

Outline Your Typography System

In addition to your official color palette, you should also include the typography system that your brand will always use. Typography will include the type hierarchy that your brand uses. This includes styles, sizes, and weights.

Find Your Brand Voice

Finally, outline your brand voice. Creating a strong brand voice will allow you to resonate with your target audience by using a voice that is positive, energetic, and unique to your brand!

You should always include examples for appropriate phrases— meaning the right tone, the best wordage, and even the words that you don’t prefer to be used.