How to create a Brand Style Guide

It can be a difficult task creating a Brand Style Guide if you don’t have a clear vision of your brand in your mind. This article helps to provide clarity and ensure you are thinking about the right things related to your brand.

How to use the guide

You can use standard language here such as this:

This guide can be used in the following scenarios:

• new employee onboarding
• shared with vendors delivering products or services related to your brand
• as a point of reference if there is any question or dispute on aspects related to your brand

This guide is a living document and should be reviewed regularly to make any updates or revisions.

Below are recommended frequencies based on the age of the business:

• 0-2 years – quarterly
• 3-5 years – biannually
• 5+ year – annually 

Background

About

Give a brief background of how your company started. Any interesting facts welcome here! You can also include high level what services or products your company sells.

Personality

If your brand was a person, what are a few core personality traits you would use to describe it?

Still stuck? Just search “brand personality adjectives” and you’ll get lots of ideas! Looking at search images here is helpful.

Values

What’s important to your brand? What defines right and wrong? You can use single words or statements for this.

Logo

Origin Story

How did your logo come to be? What does it represent? Is there any hidden message or meaning behind it?

Evolution

Has your logo changed over the years? Document it here — it shows how and why your brand has evolved. Provide details on what changed and why.

Design

Detail the design of your logo and insert images of your main logo and alternate versions. Provide do’s and don’ts for how your logo might be used. If relevant, provide details on the use of the company name in different formats (e.g. shortened versions of the company name may be used in informal communication or verbally).

Specifications

This gets into the details of your logo. Include fonts, colors, spacing guide, and minimum size for print and digital.

Usage

Here you get into how your logo may and may not be used. This is a bit more detailed than do’s and don’ts. What color backgrounds can you use the transparent version of your logo on? Is your logo typically on a square, rectangle or round background?

Visual Elements

Colors

Now we get into your brand colors. This you would typically pull from your logo. If you don’t already have a brand color palette, I recommend creating one in Coolors. It’s a fun and easy to use tool.

Typography

Typography is hugely important with a brand as it can subtly convey so many things. For free font options, you can try Google Fonts. Again, your logo and brand personality will influence your font choice.

Images

If you use photography in your branding, describe what it should look like here. For social media, define any filters to be used. Include examples of photography do’s and don’ts. If you don’t have any, you can use the free photography from Unsplash.

Graphics

Graphics include gifs, icons, and other digitally created assets that you use with your branding. Add images of these here. If you don’t use graphics for any reason, explain why it is off brand to do so.

Voice

Your brand voice defines how you communicate with your customers. Are you friendly or formal? Professional or causal? Define a few adjectives that describe your brand voice, a description of what that means, and a do and don’t scenario for each (a table here is helpful).

Applications

This just provides additional examples and context for how and where you use your brand assets. This can include marketing materials and branded merchandise. Copy in some images here to show how you use it across different media. This will also give you a good visual on whether they tie into together for consistency.

Step 5: Review regularly

Once you have your Brand Style Guide, you’ll want to review and update it with any major changes to your brand. Otherwise, just schedule a regular review to read through it to ensure it still resonates with your brand, and make any edits, deletions, or additions as needed.