How to Create a Brand Style Guide from Scratch?
Consistency is what makes any brand recognizable and memorable for a long time. A brand style guide helps in making your brand visuals and verbal elements look unified across all platforms. In this blog, we will cover a complete guide key steps that are needed to build a clear, cohesive, and effective brand style guide.
1. Define Your Brand Core Identity
Start by defining what your brand’s mission, vision, and values are. This will help you build a base for your brand’s entire style guide. Find answers to the following questions:
- What are you as a brand?
- What do you stand for?
- Who is your target audience?
- What are the personality traits that define your tone?
These are the basic fundamental questions that help you integrate your visuals and messages with your core purpose. It is essential to use a tone that directly speaks to your audience. Doesn’t matter whether it is professional, quirky, inspirational, or conversational. You need to keep these elements accessible at the beginning of your guide in order to set a tone for every decision that follows.
2. Design Your Logo Usage Guidelines
A logo is a brand’s face, so its usage needs to be strictly defined. Your logo usage guidelines should include:
- Primary logo, and the alternative versions (horizontal, stacked, monochrome, etc.)
- Small size with clear space requirement.
- Follow the Do’s and Don’ts, such as don’t stretch, recolor, or rotate. Make sure you include examples of both correct and incorrect usage of your logo in the guidelines.
- You need to clarify when and where your logo variants need to be used. Whether it is digital, print, watermarks, or social media profile images.
3. Select A Cohesive Color Palette
The brand color you use needs to stir the right emotions and support recognition from your audience. Choose 3-5 core colors and 1-2 accent shades. To ensure your brand is consistent across all media platforms. You need to state color codes in HEX, RGB, CMYK, and Pantone format. And define where each color type should be used. For instance, primary color for headers and backgrounds, accent colors for CTAs, or icons. You need to ensure that the content is accessible and readable.
4. Choose The Right Typography
The typography you use conveys the voice and tone of your brand. Choose 1–2 font families for headlines, body text, and accent copy. State how each one of them should be used:
- Headings: Size, weight, style
- Body text: Font size, line spacing
- Accent or CTA
You can use bold or italic styling, including examples of each in real layout formats. However, make sure that the fonts you choose are available across platforms or provide downloadable files if needed.
5. Establish Your Brand Voice
Establish your own tone, whether it is friendly, professional, or witty. Include the basic dos and don’ts, sample phrases, and writing style preferences in your guide. Mention grammar rules, emoji usage, and tone across channels. This will help in keeping your brand voice concise but clear enough to ensure consistent messaging.
6. Add Visual Elements And Imagery Guidelines
It is essential to have a summary of the photography styles, icon formats, and illustration types. You need to specify the color tone, image composition, and use of filters. Make sure that all your icons align with your brand tone and are consistent across all platforms. Highlight the kind of stock photos or templates to avoid, and the visuals that support your brand tone.
Conclusion
Crafting a brand style guide makes your work easy, consistent, and adds clarity and professionalism. The guide becomes the bible for all your internal teams, external partners to follow. By mapping out these key elements, you are stepping forward to make your brand recognizable, trusted, and cohesive in every expression. At Vigyapan Mart, our design team especially focuses on brand style guides to give any brand building campaign a unique & recognisable identity. Something that would click instantly, grabbing attention from everyone. Want to know more about style guides & brand building? Connect with us today and book a free brand building consultation program now.
