The Main Elements Of Your Brand’s Style Guide

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One way to create a system through your branding is by creating a style guide for your visuals. Style guides are so valuable, folks. Even as a designer, who makes design decisions all day long, I have a style guide. It just takes the guesswork out of everything – and when you have a lot to do, you don’t want to waste time wondering/guessing/figuring things out. You just need to be able to execute, and having a style guide helps you to accomplish that.

A style guide can be as intense or as basic as you want. But, basically, it should have a resolution for any issue that might come up. For example, if your logo is made up of darker colors, what do you do when it is placed on a dark background? Have a solution prepared in your style guide. Are you okay with placing your logo over an image? Or does it need a solid color block behind it? Put that in the style guide. What fonts do you use for headers versus body copy? What colors are your links? When do you switch to a more horizontal lockup of your logo?

Taking the initial time to figure this all out and create an actual system will save you so much time in the long run. It’s especially beneficial to begin documenting and systemizing these things if you plan on growing your business and bringing on employees or assistants, because then you can pass off work without too much explanation. Here are the essential items your style guide must cover.

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LOGO USAGE

You spent a lot of time perfecting your logo, so you want to make sure it’s always shown in the best and most professional way. Things you should consider with your logo:

• How and when you use different variations or lockups of it.

• When you switch to one color (and what the one color is).

• When you switch to a white out or a black out version (depending on what it’s being placed over/on top of).

• What colors are you okay placing behind your logo?

• What sizes can your logo be displayed at?

• What can’t it be placed over (images, photographs, etc.)?

• What margins need to be around your logo at all times?

• What lockup versions are absolutely not allowed?

Going ahead with answers to these questions lets you place and use your logo in a consistent way. This builds trust, authority, recognition, and makes it easier for you (or your designer, assistant, partner, etc.) to work with your logo in the correct way. If you have a more ornate logo, you should also have a minimum size that it can appear (before it begins to look jumbled and confusing) and then an alternative option if you need something very small.

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COLOR PALETTE

Creating a color palette is more than just picking out colors. You also want to consider how you use the colors and how they work together. What becomes a body copy color versus a headline color? What becomes a background color when you need it? What do you use when you need neutrals?

My recommendation is that you have a set of primary colors that include a good body copy color, a good headline color, and a good link color. I also recommend making sure the colors work well together, that one or two of them are strong background colors. I also have recently added the idea, in my palette, of a bank of neutrals to choose from for when the situation arises. I’d rather be more prepared than less prepared.

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TYPOGRAPHY

You want to choose between 2-3 fonts to use throughout your branding. You need a font for the main body copy, one to be headers/title, and one for special emphasis (totally optional, I don’t actually have one for TheCrownFox branding). More than 3 fonts will probably begin to get confusing, so as a general rule, I’d steer clear of that.

Typography should be, at this point in “the way the world works”, web friendly. Or at least have a comparable web-font option. It’s easiest to use Typekit or Google Fonts, if you want to eliminate wondering if your fonts will work online.

With choosing your fonts, you also want to consider creating rules for how it can be altered/designed. For example, do you allow adjustments to the kerning and leading? If so, what sort of adjustments? You would also want to consider, or make a rule, about treatments such as turning things to uppercase, or changing the weight of the font for emphasis. Rather than just haphazardly choosing these things on a per project basis, it would be more efficient and more consistent (and therefore more professional) to have the rules already established within your style guide.

When you are making these decisions, consider the effect of different spacing. Something with blown out leading might appear airy, light, and modern. Something very compact will read as rushed or intense.  Too many uppercase sections can come across aggressive or rude. But most importantly, whatever you decide to do, do it consistently.

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UNIQUE DESIGN DETAILS

Things that would fall under here would be patterns, illustrations, specific design elements, etc. and how you use them throughout your branding. So if you often incorporate a really harsh diagonal line throughout your branding, specifics about how you use that would be something you want to establish – like what the angle is, how thick the line is, what happens when it intersects something else, and so on. Or if you use illustrations, think about what colors they appear (or can appear), how close they appear to text, the edge of a design, etc.

With distinctive elements like these pieces you really want to make sure you use them in a way that makes sense and adds to your branding (and overall goals). It can easily become overbearing or just “too much” and cross into gimmicky.

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OTHER

Other pieces that you would consider including into your style guide would be photography and copy/voice.  If you use stock/styled photography, or any sort of photography, in your branding you want it to make sense with the rest of your branding and be used effectively. You can include samples in your style guide of photography, or just make a note that you prefer images with certain things. For example: lots of white space, business casual wear, 1-2 people max, no people, food, coffee, etc. You can set whatever parameters you’d like - it’s just better to actually set them, so you aren’t wondering what types of images to use.

Copy/voice doesn’t really fit into “visuals” but it is commonly covered in style guides, because it is something else that benefits from having rules. So if you have a good idea who you are targeting, chances are you know some phrases, examples, references, and words to use to reach them. This is especially helpful if you are thinking of growing your team at all, because then you could handoff things like writing social media posts. Ideally, at some point, one person would do these sort of tasks, so everything felt the same – but you can create that ‘sameness’ by having key phrases, words, styles, etc. for people to pull from.

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If you don’t have all the answers to these questions yet, that’s okay. I just wanted to give you a place to start from so that you could establish a style guide. When your business starts to grow, expand, and evolve – having these set rules will be so helpful. You don’t have to “figure it out” on the spot, or try to explain to someone else all these little details that you might have in your mind, but not written out anywhere. 

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The First Steps To Creating Your Brand Identity

This past weekend I co-hosted a webinar/workshop and talked about inspiration boards and my process with clients. If you haven’t heard of an inspiration board, it’s generally the first step to creating the visuals of your branding. It is a collage of images that work together and give ideas about a feeling, vibe, colors, textures, typography, and so on, in regards to what we are going to create for your visual identity. I wanted to share some of that information with you today on the blog, so here are the three steps to my inspiration board process.

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DEFINE KEY WORDS + FEELINGS

If you’ve read my blog before, you know I put a lot of emphasis on the foundational pieces of branding long before we move into visuals. This is true in my client process, too. We’ve already gone through questionnaires and spent some time talking about target clients, overall goals, and paths to getting there. I’ve already asked my client to consider and come up for 3-5 words that they hope describe their business/branding and 3-5 words that they hope potential customers would use in describing their business/branding.

Those words are very valuable pieces of information – they are the biggest and best tool I have to work off of, honestly. If we want “soft and romantic” versus “pops of color and vibrant” I need to know. Those evoke very different visuals and directions. Now, those words are supported by the images that come later on, but I’ll get to that in a second.

Words that are as precise and descriptive as possible are best. Here are some examples, just to get you thinking: strong, streamlined, soft, airy, detailed, clean, bright, or somber. Think about those words and how they immediately put images into your head. Those are the kind of words to keep in mind while moving forward into creating visuals.

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GET PINNIN’

This part of the process is pretty standard across the designers I know of. Pinterest is an amazing tool for seeing a lot of images at once, and that is exactly what we need to do next. So, I create a secret Pinterest board and invite a client to pin on it. The hope is that they pin at least 15-20 images that are visually appealing to them so that I can take those and create the actual collage.

There are a couple of things to consider with this step. First, avoid pinning any other logos or brand boards. These are far too distracting and will plant seeds in your mind that only copying will ‘fix.’ We obviously aren’t going to copy someone else’s logo or brand boards, so better to just avoid that entirely.

Also, I tell clients to pin anything and everything. It doesn’t matter if it “has nothing to do with your business” or feels completely unconnected. I just want to see styles, lines, colors, feelings, etc. Remember when I said those words were support by the images earlier? Here’s what I meant by that: you might say something like “rustic” or “chic” but the pictures support what that really means to you. Because your version of “chic” might be different than mine, right? So you said these words earlier, which are very important and helpful to me, but now I also get to see what you really meant by those words through the images you choose.

The other thing I like to ask my clients to do is consider every image they pin through the eyes of their newly defined target audience or client. Think about each picture deliberately and think, “Okay, I liked this picture of xyz (jewelry, living rooms, food, etc.) Would it appeal to my target audience in some way? Would they like the colors, the style, the composition, etc.?” Having that mental checklist is valuable because again we are getting in the head of your target audience, which is always beneficial, and trying to create visuals that appeal to them.

If you are struggling to find pins, my recommendation is to first start with your regular Pinterest boards. Since you’ve already pinned these images, chances are they are visually appealing to you. If you still need more after combing through your boards, you can search related areas to your industry. So if you are a photographer, you could look up wedding photography. If you are a nutritionist, maybe look up food images. If you work with children, you could look up playroom interior designs, or toys. I also recommend letting your search evolve naturally. So in the same way that you can make a mind map and start to expand off of one original word or idea, do that with your images. Maybe you start by pinning images of flowers, but if that evolves into window boxes, windows, then stain glass windows… let it! Even if your business has nothing to do with stain glass windows, it’s still a huge visual clue to what you like as far as color, style, and feel.

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USE PHOTOSHOP TEMPLATE

Once a client feels they have successfully pinned enough images to work with, I move into creating the actual collage or board.  I go through the kind of tedious task of pulling all the images from Pinterest into a folder within my client folder and then again into Photoshop.

I then spend time collaging the images using clipping masks in Photoshop. The goal is to whittle down the 15-20 images to 6-7 images that best work together and start to create a cohesive feeling and look. From those images I can begin to pull a color story too, which will greatly inspire the color palette moving forward.

Some of the best images to use, and most helpful, are ones that contain typography. Something like an inspirational quote in a very curly, cursive font will influence logo directions. Something more clean and modern will push us in a different direction. I also love pictures with patterns or illustrations, because this clues me into branding choices down the road.

I send the client a copy to review and make sure they are happy with the overall feeling before moving forward. This collage then becomes what I use as reference throughout the rest of the project, from logos, to color palettes, to stylistic choices on collateral, and so on. It plays a much larger role than “just looking pretty.”

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