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A brand book, aka style guide, is the ultimate playbook that contains your business's visual and written identity. Think of it as the all-knowing guide that keeps your brand looking sharp and sounding consistent, no matter where it shows up.
In plain English, it's the rulebook for representing your brand. It covers everything from your mission, values, and vision to the nitty-gritty details like logos (primary, secondary, submarks—you name it), color palette, typography, imagery, and your brand's voice and tone. It's your brand's DNA, ensuring everyone on your team knows exactly how to keep your brand's identity cohesive and unmistakably you across all platforms.
Style guides and brand guidelines aren't the same thing, but they can be in the same document.
Brand Guidelines are all about your brand’s personality, tone of voice, principles, and messaging (yep, that means your mission, values, and unique value proposition). They spell out who your brand is at its core.
Style Guide is your creative team’s best friend. It's packed with the rules for making style choices: which colour palette to use on social media, which fonts go in magazine ads, and what kind of language flies on TikTok. This guide is a lifesaver for web developers, marketers, and influencers.
For smaller brands or local businesses, these can be one and the same document.
Why Bother with a Brand Book?
A brand book turns all the branding know-how in your head into an actionable tool. It provides concrete guidelines that make it a breeze for any creative you work with to nail your brand’s look and feel, even if they've never heard of you before. Instead of fielding a million questions about your branding, just hand them this manual.
Picture this: you hire a web developer and a social media manager. With the same brand book, everything they create aligns perfectly with your brand vision. The result? Cohesive, on-brand content across the board - without you having to remember to explain everything you know to someone new.
You’ve heard it before: consistency is key. The more consistent your brand is, the easier it is to recognize, which is EVERYTHING for long-term success.
In a local market, trust is currency. A well-defined brand, laid out in your brand book, builds trust between your business and the community. It’s the visual and emotional anchor customers remember when they need what you offer. Consistency breeds familiarity, and familiarity breeds trust.
For small businesses, time and resources are gold. A brand book streamlines your marketing efforts with a clear roadmap. With predefined colors, fonts, and messaging guidelines, creating marketing materials becomes a snap. This saves time, ensures a polished look across all channels, and helps you stand out in your audience's minds.
So, how do you create your brand book?
Step #1: Touch base with your team
This might be a group of individuals, or it might just be you wearing many different hats. Either way, you'll want:
An executive, CEO, or owner who understands the company's mission and goals and who can ensure they are correctly communicated.
Marketing personnel who know the ins and outs of your existing branding (including what goes into newsletters, how the brand partners with influencers, social media standards, etc)
A graphic designer who understands asset creation, such as web layouts and logo design
A sales team member who can represent your customer's perspective
A legal representative who can answer any questions about copyright and trademarks.
Step #2: Document the rules
Have an in-depth talk with your team or a major brainstorming session with yourself, and write down the instructions and rules that would help an outsider authentically represent your brand.
For example, your graphic designer might help you outline rules for how to use colours, logos, and fonts. They'll keep in mind things like what brand colour pairings have enough contrast to be used as text/background pairings. Your marketing team can explain how to communicate in your brand voice, including word choice, emojis, tone, and rules for punctuation. Your sales team can make it clear how to talk about products. They know how to position the benefits of your product or service so that customers will care about the features.
Step #3: Putting your style guide together
If you want to invest in your style guide, a platform like Frontify can be a great idea. If you're not there yet, Canva is a great option. You'll be able to update it as needed and have the capability of downloading it as a PDF or providing a link when it needs to be shared.
Step #4: Expanding your resources
It's almost a guarantee that when you spend so much time thinking about your branding and how to represent your company, you'll realize your brand book is missing something. This is a great opportunity to fill in those blanks and really flesh it out.
Step #5: Updates and maintenance
This is a living document! Don't hesitate to update it as needed. If you're adding a seasonal colour palette, add it to the brand book. The contents of your book will evolve with your brand. If you're strategic and intentional, it can be a valuable resource.
What should go in your brand book?
The goal of your brand book is to document every element of your brand, including basic assets like logos and visual guides like mood boards, right on down to communication standards. This is a general make up of what your brand book should include.
Table of Contents:
This should be a well-organized directory of your brand book, including sections and page numbers. It may seem unnecessary at first if your brand book is only three or four pages, but as your brand grows, so will your need for a table of contents.
Brand Overview
This should contain your brand story, mission and values. It should be a comprehensive overview of who your brand is, what it's about, its goals, and its why.
Brand Story
Your brand story is a summary of your company's history, mission, purpose, and values, with a narrative structure that brings it to life and engages the reader. If you've never written it down before, start off by telling your story like you're telling it to a friend and refine it from there. Storytelling is huge when it comes to branding, so don't be afraid of sharing your emotional tie to your business.
Mission Statement
Think of your mission statement as an action-packed declaration of your purpose. It's the compass of your brand style guide, ensuring that all your content works towards the same goal and truly connects with your audience. Whether it’s guiding your blog posts, paid content, ad copy, visuals, or even your slogan, this statement keeps everything on track.
Don't have one yet? No worries. Creating your brand book is the perfect time to get clear on your mission. Ask yourself: Why did you start your business? What impact do you want to have on your customers? On your community? On the world? Use these answers to craft a mission statement that reflects your brand’s purpose and direction.
Brand Values
Brand values are the fundamental beliefs that the company is structured around. It's what the leadership and team stand for in their operations, community, and industry, and express the meaning you want your brand's work to have in the world. An example could be diversity, sustainability, passion, and trust.
Brand Voice and Tone
Nailing down and clearly communicating your brand voice is absolutely crucial! Whether your brand’s personality is friendly and casual or sophisticated and formal, you want to make it super clear for content creators, marketers, salespeople, and web designers to know exactly how to represent your brand. Provide keywords and examples—both of what to do and what not to do.
As your brand grows, consider expanding this into an editorial style guide. This can demonstrate how to phrase specific products, outline topics your brand can and cannot discuss, and specify other brands and companies it is and isn’t okay to mention. Include guides for social media and blog content, email marketing, video scripts, website/landing page copy, learning resources, and even PR talking points.
Slogans and Taglines
Detail your slogan and tagline. Remember, slogans are advertising-focused, aiming to sell a product or service, while taglines are all about public relations, raising awareness about your overall brand. Be clear about which is which and in what context they should be used.
Buyer Overview
This section should have an explanation of your target demographics, as well as a buyer persona. This will help you to keep your ideal audience at the top of your mind, and if you're giving your brand book to a marketing professional, it will help them immensely.
Target Demographics - Generally broken down into Demographic, Psychographic, Geographic, and Behavioural, target demographics represent the measurable characteristics of a group of people or population. Some of these are gender, age, income level, race, education level, religion, marital status, and geographic location. Consumers with the same demographics tend to value the same products and services, which is why narrowing down the segments is one of the most important factors in determining target markets.
Buyer Persona - is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. It includes details on your customer's job title, age, gender, and professional challenges and informs who your brand is creating content for. Your blogs, ad copy, and social media presence should attract this person, so flesh this persona out as much as possible. How does she spend her downtime? How busy is he on weekends? What hobbies do they have? What other brands do they like?
Visual Identity and Guidelines
This section should cover the ins and outs of your brand's visual identity, from logos to colour palettes, and how to use them.
Colour Palette
The colour palette is the most distinctive and recognizable part of your company's branding guidelines. This is the group of colours your company uses to design its brand assets. It guides every single piece of visual content you create, including your logo, web design, social media, event collateral, printed ads, and social media presence.
Your brand colour palette should include your primary colours, as well as a wide variety of secondary, tertiary, and neutral colours. This allows for more dynamic design decisions when it comes to content creation while still retaining a cohesive brand identity. Include colour swatches as well as HEX and RGB colour codes.
Logos and Logo Guide
Your logos might seem like the most obvious thing to include, but it's actually a complex and important piece. In your guide, you should include the visuals of your logo(s), explain the design details, and detail how they can be used. For example, you would want to explain where to use your full logo and where to use your submark. Including a link to logo downloads is also a great idea.
Imagery and Iconography Guide
This is optional but consider including approved imagery, pre-designed icons, and symbols in your brand book. Do you use icons on your website? Add examples of icons with preferred line weights and colours. Do you have a preferred photography style? Add examples of brand photography or photos pulled from a stock website such as Unsplash.
Mood boards
Add mood boards to your brand book! This type of collaging style can help to demonstrate your brand's vibe really clearly. As much as written guidelines can provide clarity, visuals also pack a punch. Language like "bright and fun" can mean different things to different people, as can "classy and sophisticated." By providing a mood board, you'll make your meaning 100% clear.
Typography Guide
Typography is a visual element of your brand book that goes beyond the font you used in your company logo. It supports your brand design in every possible way. We recommend using a primary and secondary font, with a mix of serifs and font weights for different uses. Typography plays a major role in creating your brand's vibe, as well as the user experience on your website. Make sure your typography is visually appealing and easy to read.
Templates and Examples
Including a section that has links to various templates and/or visual examples of brand collaterals is always a fantastic idea. Templates can include things like social media graphics, newsletter formats, and blog posts. Make sure to detail how you want each template used and how much wiggle room the person using it has to make changes.
If you don't have templates or don't want to use them, don't hesitate to include visual examples of posts, newsletters, and blogs instead of or in addition to them.
Closing Notes
Some of these things may not apply to your business right now, and that's ok. Your brand book is meant to be a living document that grows with your brand (are you sick of hearing me say 'living document' yet?). It should be what you need it it be. Even if you're a small business, it can be helpful to create one, if only to clarify your mission and standards for yourself.
As you scale and your business grows, having this piece in position can help to keep you on track and focused - and when you're ready to start working with web designers or social media marketers, it'll be really nice to have a single document to send them when they ask for your branding instead of having to assemble something on the fly.
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