If you have a brand that you produce any kind of content or products for, then you need a brand style guide to help ensure that everything that comes from your brand is consistent and recognizable as being representative of your specific business. However, so many businesses, especially small businesses, don’t have a brand style guide. But when the time comes to get help with things like brand management or outside graphic design services, those fulfilling the work may not get the work right without a guide like this to follow.
So to help ensure that you’re able to avoid these types of issues in the future, here are three tips for putting together a brand style guide.
Make Your Mission And Brand Vision Clear
Before you jump right to how you envision the use of style and color for your brand, it’s a good idea to first state very clearly what the mission and vision is that you have in mind for your brand. Without this information stated very clearly for anyone with your style guide to read, there could be more room for interpretation with things than you might like, which could result in you having content and creations that don’t always fit together like they should.
As part of this effort to make sure that everything coming from your brand strongly conveys that same mission and vision, you should share in your style guide information about where your brand came from and where you’d like it to go in the future. And if you have certain words or attributes that you want to have associated with your brand, stating these words here can also help anyone creating content for you know the vibe that you’re going for.
State The Tone You’re Aiming For
In addition to the underlying influence behind the choices that you’ll make relating to your style guide, you’ll also want to state how you want these things to be portrayed to your target audience through your tone.
For some organizations, having a professional and business-like tone is vital. But for others, having a more friendly and casual tone is what they’re aiming for. So before you have anyone write content for you, make sure they have seen your brand style guide and can create content with the tone you want.
Get Your Visuals On The Same Page
Along with the tone and the way that written content will be done, you also need to include in your brand style guide how you want visual representations of your brand to appear.
Within the visual section of your brand style guide, you’ll want to include information about formatting, color choices, logo designs, the fonts you want used, and more. If there’s anything that will be put out visually for your brand, you’ll want to be sure that it adheres to the guidelines in your style guide so that everything about your brand is cohesive.
If you’re needing to put together a brand style guide for your business or organization, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you create some comprehensive.