Creating a brand style guide might not seem like the most thrilling task, but it’s absolutely essential for content success. A well-defined style guide offers clear, consistent guidelines, preventing brand mishaps caused by inconsistency or miscommunication within your content team.
Think of a brand style guide as a tool to cultivate content authenticity. It equips everyone involved in creating content for your company with the necessary instructions to maintain a unified brand voice and identity.
This article will explain why your organization needs a style guide, what elements to include, and showcase examples of excellent style guides to ensure streamlined external communications.
Why a Brand Style Guide Matters
First, let’s address the fundamental question: What Is A Brand Style Guide?
A brand style guide is a comprehensive set of standards defining your company’s branding. It encompasses grammar, tone, logo usage, colors, visuals, word choice, perspective, and much more.
By crafting a detailed brand style guide, you ensure that all published content is consistent, polished, easily recognizable, and ultimately, more engaging. A thorough, well-considered style guide prioritizes your audience. It establishes a recognizable and captivating voice and personality that allows readers to forge a more personal connection with your brand.
Essential Elements of a Brand Style Guide
GatherContent suggests a style guide should ideally be between four and five pages. Anything longer can be overwhelming. The key is to tailor your style guide to resonate with your target audience and their needs.
If your brand has a mission statement or a boilerplate “About Us” description, use that as a starting point. Revisit it to ensure it accurately reflects both what you say and how you say it. If you define your brand voice as conversational, but your mission statement is laden with corporate jargon, it might be time for a revision.
From there, create a table of contents to serve as an outline for your style guide. Every style guide should begin with an introduction, which could include your mission statement, a letter from the CEO, an “About Us” page, or a general overview of your company’s brand and target audience. Next, dedicate sections to your brand’s writing style and visual elements. Here’s a more detailed breakdown of what these sections should include:
Writing Style Guidelines
A brand’s image is significantly shaped by what it says and how it says it. Details like the choice between “&” and “and,” or whether to use numerical or written forms of numbers, might seem insignificant individually. However, the cumulative effect of these details is substantial. When consistently applied throughout your brand’s published content, they project a unified voice, consistent thinking, and a level of credibility that is impossible to achieve without this consistency.
Here are some tips for ensuring your brand guide effectively aids in creating top-quality content:
Visual Style Guidelines
Visual cues are just as crucial for brand consistency as written elements. Consider these elements for the visual section of your style guide:
- Formats: Provide guidelines on maintaining brand consistency across different content formats, including infographics, videos, motion graphics, and more.
- Colors: Detail your brand’s color palette, specifying the function of each color. Include hex, CMYK, and RGB codes, as well as Pantone numbers.
- Logo: Include all variations of your logo with examples of proper usage. If there are older or frequently misused versions, include them as “do not use” examples.
- Fonts: List all brand fonts for headings, paragraphs, and other elements, clearly defining their specific uses.
- Presentation Format: Include a link to a company slideshow template for presentations.
Exemplary Brand Style Guides
Let’s examine two well-known brands with exceptional style guides and highlight what makes them special.
Mailchimp
Mailchimp’s style guide thoroughly prepares contributors to create on-brand content. It’s a great resource to consult when developing a highly detailed guide. Mailchimp also categorizes writing guidelines by content type, ranging from emails to blog posts and social media updates.
Highlights of Mailchimp’s style guide include its comprehensive word list and insightful voice and tone sections. The voice section starts with this concise paragraph: “At Mailchimp, we’ve walked in our customers’ shoes, and we know marketing technology is a minefield of confusing terminology. That’s why we speak like the experienced and compassionate business partner we wish we’d had way back when.”
They further elaborate:
“We treat every hopeful brand seriously. We want to educate people without patronizing or confusing them.
Using offbeat humor and a conversational voice, we play with language to bring joy to their work. We prefer the subtle over the noisy, the wry over the farcical. We don’t take ourselves too seriously.
Whether people know what they need from us or don’t know the first thing about marketing, every word we say informs and encourages. We impart our expertise with clarity, empathy, and wit.”
Uber
While Uber has recently moved its style guide to a protected site, its previously public guide remains a valuable example. It’s filled with GIFs and videos that showcase the dynamic movement Uber represents. Uber uses its style guide to communicate its brand story, highlight successful branding examples, and provide helpful tools. The image below exemplifies Uber’s bold style: “A bold new brand awaits.”
According to Uber, the guidelines cover nine key elements: logo, color, composition, iconography, illustration, motion, photography, tone of voice, and typography. The style guide’s home page also prioritizes user experience by highlighting and linking to the most frequently requested assets:
Creating Your Brand’s Style Guide
Now that you understand the importance of a good style guide, its structure, and what to include, it’s time to develop one for your own company. Involve your marketing team, sales team, and any other creative professionals involved in marketing and product development. Once completed, share it across the entire company and maintain it as a living document in an easily accessible location.
