A well-crafted brand style guide enhances your competitive presence in the market. It gives you a powerful impact on your potential customers by boosting brand awareness. Having your own branding will keep you distinct from your competitors, increasing the chance to motivate your target audience to build their trust on your brand. If you are consistent with your branding, you will establish an enhanced brand recognition across all channels. This is when customers build their loyalty to your brand that results in increased sales and a positive growth of your business.
What is a Brand Style Guide?
A brand style guide is the foundation of your company’s image and distinctiveness from others. It is a set of standards that provide a comprehensive definition of your brand. Your brand style guide will outline how you want your message to be communicated through different channels, and how this message will be decoded by your target clients.
Crafting the Key Message of your Brand
Before you decide on how you craft your brand style, you must first understand the purpose of your brand. What is your vision? Your objectives? Or your core values? These will help you be guided on crafting a specific concept that you want your target audience to perceive about your brand. The key message will be the crucial part and the core foundation of your business as this quickly explains what service and value you provide to your customers.
The Impact of Brand Style Guide to your Clients
- Easy recognition of your brand – Having your own brand style nurtures your consistency in presenting your identity to your clients. This will help your clients easily remember and recognize your marketing efforts.
- Enhanced Communication – Your communication efforts through different forms, may it be a brochure, a poster, or a social media post, will be made effective when you incorporate your branding. Clients will have an easy understanding of your brand messaging if it reinforces personality and style.
- Establishing trust and loyalty – Clients will have a positive perception with your brand if they witness that you have a clear identity and direction of your objectives. They trust brands that commit to quality and details, which encourages them to repeat their engagement with the brand’s marketing campaigns and services.
A brand style guide provides specifications of how you present yourself to the market. These specifications include the logo, the color schemes, the typography, the symbolism, and taglines. These are all crucial components in crafting your communication strategy to compel your target audience.
Components of a Brand Style Guide
Logo
The logo is the first thing that customers will instantly remember about your brand. It is considered as the face of your brand. When you communicate your purpose and strategy to your clients, the logo is the first thing that they recognize. With that, your company logo must be creative, professional-looking, and relevant to your company’s identity. It is a foundational element of your company’s brand style guide. Further, your logo must embody timelessness so it stays relevant regardless of the development in trends. Always consider consulting professional graphic designers to achieve a good logo design for your brand.
Definer provides exceptional logo designs that match your preferences and your desired objective in creating a personality for your brand. Here are some of the examples of their logos designed by our professional designers:
Further, it is not advisable to frequently change your logo, as it will lose its purpose to enforce long-term brand recognition. You may enhance and improvise occasionally to hop in social celebrations, holidays, events, or movements that align with your values. For example, you may incorporate a rainbow design to your logo every month of June to convey that you are supporting Pride Month.
Color schemes
Colors can evoke emotions, and influence the decision making of customers. It is also the most prominent part in expressing your brand through different forms and channels. Choosing the color palette of your brand may depend on your key message and your target audience in the industry. For example, the luxurious clothing brand Chanel uses the black and white color palette to express sophistication. This color combination is associated with power and elegance, that effectively convey their branding is exclusivity and quality, targeting stylish elites.
You should also be creative in combining colors. Your brand color palette may have primary colors used dominantly in collaterals, and accent colors to add depth while balancing distribution of shades throughout the design. Your usage of brand colors to your marketing collateral must be adjusted according to purpose and context of your materials, and at the same time ensuring consistency to the overall look and feel of your branding.
Examples of Brand Color Schemes
Typography
Typography is an important aspect in creating your brand style guide. Choosing the right typography for your brand contributes to establishing your company’s image, ensuring a striking and impactful presence to your audience. Crafting well-structured compositions and messages will be no use if the chosen typography is not helpful and favorable to your clients. So make sure to choose a good typography that enhances readability of your texts. You cannot just select one typography for all of your marketing collaterals, so be versatile and consider your selection based on the levels of typography.
- Primary font – used for the main headings therefore it must have a powerful impact to the audience at first glance, and must be carefully considered to include in the brand style guide.
- Secondary font – this font is typically used for the subheadings and it must be prominent enough for readers to not miss it, but also simple to not overpower the primary font.
- Tertiary font – this used for the body text of your composition so it must be simple and readable to the eyes of the readers. Tertiary fonts must allow readers a comfortable time to read and absorb information.
- Accent font – this will be the type of font used to put emphasis on a statement or to highlight an idea. The font style of your accent fonts must be captivating to serve its purpose.
See BookMaster’s 7 Typography Design Tips
Symbolism & Iconography
The symbols and icons you incorporate on your marketing collateral are crucial to effectively elaborate the intent of your message to target audiences. Some clients prefer visual aids to quickly make sense out of your content. Therefore, choosing the right icons and symbols to represent your brand style guide is important to avoid misrepresentation and misinterpretation of your message. You have to consider your target audience too, by understanding their preferences and the value they encompass so your content will stick in their long-term memory.
Here are some examples of brand symbolism and iconography:
As you can see, the symbols and icons show consistency with each other in terms of style and colors. It enhances the visuals of your marketing materials in all channels, may it be your website user interface, printed collaterals, and it gives your brand a personality and a sense of familiarity. With that, the audience will have a pleasurable and easy experience engaging with your promotional efforts.
Taglines
Taglines help your brand explain your branding succinctly. These are short phrases intended for a long-lasting impression of your brand. When people hear or read your tagline, they must instantly remember your brand and the identity you show to your niche. Taglines do not necessarily tell what your company specifically does, but rather express your overall identity to reinforce brand recognition. You have to craft a unique, original, and attention grabbing tagline that will distinguish you from other brands. Here are some famous brand taglines that drew interest to the mass:
- MasterCard: “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s MasterCard.”
- Visa: “Everywhere You Want To Be.”
- American Express: “Don’t leave home without it”
- Airbnb: “Belong Anywhere”
Why should your company have a brand style guide
Just like any human individual, companies also need an identity to present themselves. Companies function by communicating to clients, partners, and investors, and their ways of communication must be effective and remarkable to keep them maintain a higher retention of your brand messaging. In short, your company must have its own unique personality so people can easily remember your brand amidst a competitive market within your niche. An effective marketing strategy is achieved by having a structured brand style guide.
DefinerTech will help you have a professional and high-quality brand style. They provide services in establishing your brand style guide, ensuring a strong and recognizable identity across all platforms. If you are still struggling on deciding which design or style suits best to all your marketing collateral, consult with DefinerTech as early as now, get a guide in crafting your brand style guide, and watch your business grow!