Make your Brand Explode into Growth with a Hands-on Style Guide

by Monica Di Santi

November 2, 2024

Connecting with your ideal client in a perfect, consistent and cohesive way at every touch point, is the first goal every brand should bear in mind to achieve success and profit.

Turn your business into an easily recognizable brand that customers spot easily in a crowded market. Make clients stop, pay attention to your publication with the promise that it will be enjoyable and they'll love to share and comment on it.

Increase your brand awareness and trust with guidelines that describe your brand identity in details and, make sure the image you display to the world is consistent across all channels.

Collaborators can apply the style guide easily every time they create content to publish, so no matter who does the task, the brand identity remains unchangeable.

What is a Brand Style Guide?

A brand style guide is a set of instructions to determine the visual and writing style of the brand. The brand image has to remain unchanged in the eyes of the world, even if presented in different formats and channels and, if you have a large team to assign specific tasks.

A brand style guide gives clear directions on how to display the brand to the public in visuals and words. A list of what to avoid may also contribute to the right production of content.

What does it Include?

This type of guidelines includes the accurate usage of the logo, the color scheme, imagery appearance, illustrations forms, typography, iconography, writing style, such as grammar, punctuation, vocabulary and even words to keep away from.

In short, a brand style guide should describe branding elements, the particular type of language that projects the brand personality, tone and graphics, guaranteeing your brand will explode into growth.

Elements of a Brand Style Guide

Brand Personality

Sometimes it’s difficult to become aware of your brand personality. In fact, your brand already has an identity even if you haven't thought about it.

The best way to start a discovery journey is to ask yourself these questions:

• What do you do? what problem do you solve? what need do you take care of?

• How do you do it? What method or approach do you use?

• Why do you run this type of business? What’s the philosophy behind your business?

According to author Simon Sinek, the best way to start this self-revealing road is using the question why?

Author Sinek connects distant concepts such as limbic brain, culture, business processes and sales as components of a deep interrelationship that assures the building of trust, loyalty and long-term success.

People want to consume things that are in accordance with what they think and believe, tied to the idea of belonging to something bigger than themselves. **

Your WHY is your purpose, cause, or belief and that creates a big impact on the audience.**

• Why did you start your business?

• Why do you get up every morning ready to work on your project?

• Why should people care about what you do?

If you take into consideration the WHY, together with your how, you’ll reach to statement that expresses the uniqueness of your company.

“People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it and what you do simply proves what you believe. In fact, people will do the things that prove what they believe.” --Simon Sinek

Once you have answered these question, define your mission, vision and values.

What is a Business Mission Statement?

A Mission Statement is a description of your business activity, your goals, your method to achieve those goals and who benefits from it,.

To write a great mission statement think out of the box and make it memorable and inspiring.

Include these ingredients:

• express the idea, using an active verb in the present tense.

• mention your target audience.

• describe the transformation you offer to those who choose your service.

• explain what type of service or product you offer.

• how you achieve your goal.

Famous Brand's Mission Statements

Tesla's mission is to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. To achieve our mission, we're building a world powered by solar, enabled by battery storage and transported by electric vehicles (EV). Tesla's EVs include the following - Cybertruck, Model S, Model 3, Model X and Model Y.

Our mission is to foster joy and belonging for everyone - from gamers to creators, players to employees. Blizzard

Meta's mission is to build the future of human connection and the technology that makes it possible

What is a Business Vision Statement?

A vision statement is a business announcement, telling the public what they wish to become in the future. This statement proclaims what goals the company wants to achieve in the long term. This statement turns into a guide that shows the road to pursue.

Famous Brands' Vision Statement

We design sustainable systems that are massively scalable—resulting in the greatest environmental benefit possible. Our energy generation and storage products work together with our electric vehicles to amplify their impact. Our master plans share our vision for a sustainable future and what we are doing about it. Read Tesla's Master Plans Tesla

Our goal is to make every day more fun with games such as Candy Crush™, Call of Duty®, World of Warcraft®, Overwatch®, Hearthstone® and Diablo®. Blizzard

Build the future of how people connect.Meta

Brand's Values

Your business values are a set of ethic rules that guides the business behavior on all its fronts. It’s the philosophy that determines what way is the best to work, communicate and guide your community, according to your belief.

Values are connected to ideals and give you the tools to determine what’s most important in your organization, what you stand for and which principles you defend. It’s the way you believe is the right thing to do.

The culture and values of an organization are the most important reason why employees like to work there and want to stay.

Business values are important because they help your brand to grow with purpose and vision. They also shape and shape:

• employees behavior at work

• interaction with clients

• leaders accountability

  It is possible that people who share core values will make choices along the same lines. Share this Quote Fethullah Gulen

Famous Brand's Values

The ethical treatment of all people and regard for human rights is core to Tesla's mission of a sustainable future for all. This Global Human Rights Policy (“Policy”) is applicable to both our own operations and our supply chain, and includes the communities impacted by our operations and our supply chain.

We create a culture where we are straightforward and willing to have hard conversations with each other. At the same time, we are also respectful and when we share feedback, we recognize that many of the world's leading experts work here. We are stewards of our company and our mission.Meta

Dedicated to creating the most epic entertainment experiences... ever. Blizzard Entertainment’s eight core values represent the principles and beliefs that have guided our company throughout the years. These values are reflected in employees' decisions and actions every day.

Brand Visual Identity

A picture is worth a thousand words, says a popular adage.

An image conveys strong message in a simple way that’s easily understood in a single look. Generally, a picture transmits its meaning or essence more effectively.

Hasn’t it happened to you?

Haven’t you spotted your favorite product from a distance because...

you recognize its color and shape first, even if you can’t read the trademark?

What you did was to identify your favorite product visually.

And does your brand do the same for your customers?

If it doesn’t yet, you have to take good care of your brand visual identity.

Those who are regularly exposed to a product visually, develop mental associations and so emotional responses are triggered every time they see the product.

That’s the reason why you need a strong, consistent visual presence in the market.

Brand visual presentation strengthens your business core values, brand promise and even tells your brand story.

To develop a profitable brand visual identity you have to pay attention to the visible elements your brand displays. This appearance is important because it helps to identify and differentiate your brand in consumers' minds.

Logo

A logo stands for a quick recognition of your brand and its core message.

One of the most important features of a successful logo is to project an image that delights your audience. Keep it simple but relevant.

Take into account readability, font, fitness in different formats and sizes of content.

You can define different usage your of logo, starting with a primary full color logo which is the main version. Then, define a grayscale logo version and a solid black model, too.

The Color Scheme

Choose a set of colors to be used together with the main one. Define colors with the hex and RGB codes.

Choose wisely as every color represent different emotions.

Together with the principal color, choose 4 shades of the same color from darkest to lightest.

Then pick the hues that contrast or complement the main color. You can use them to call attention.

Typography

You need to define what type of font has to be used in the brand graphic design, including size, space and alignment.

Also, include standard sizes for headings, subheadings and call to action.

Imagery Appearance

Although you may use different types of pictures, graphics,charts and videos, all the imagery has to display the brand consistent visual appearance.

Describe the style that represents your brand. It may include the usage of certain colors, shadows, filters, adjusting exposure or temperature of the visual elements.

Writing Style

A brand communicates its core message through imagery and words. What you say and how you say it, enhances the brand identity and message.

Your tone of voice includes the words you use, pitch and volume. It certainly projects a brand image that customers perceive.

This tone has to be used consistently across all communication and marketing materials and helps you differentiate your brand from the competition.

What’s your brand's tone of voice like?

• Is your brand serious and formal?

• Is it casual and conversational?

• Is it humorous?

Establish your Editorial tone and style to deal with consistency in every piece of writing that you publish to connect with your audience.

Grammar rules

Details of grammar and usage are a great resource to create consistency across all materials.

• What are your rules for grammar, punctuation, and spelling?

• What are the preferred fonts and colors?

• How should content be formatted?

Be as specific as possible, and make sure to include any special requirements, such as citing sources or including images. ( copied)

Punctuation and Capitalization

Punctuation and capitalization help the reader navigate the text easily. These tools break up your texts into paragraph and sentences making it more digestible.

Punctuation and Capitalization provide structure to the ideas you want to express.

• Define the type of sentences that make your text strong.

• Set rules for the use of numbers and symbols in writing such as arroba.

• Determine your headline style.

• Detail the usage of commas.

Formatting

Formatting helps create a professional and consistent presentation of any text. Formatting includes color and size. Sometimes, formatting adds emphasis, highlight certain concepts and call attention to certain areas of the text.

Formatting makes reading easy for your reader.

In your Brand style guide define font colors, sizes, the usage of bold, italics forms. Also, determine amount of white spaces, bullets, headlines and more in your messaging

Vocabulary

Vocabulary is the type of words and phrases used in a text.

What type of vocabulary does your brand use?

• formal

• simple

• jargon

• slang

Define what type of words to use, and which ones to avoid.

Conclusion

At first glance the brand style guide may be considered as a limitation to creativity, but in fact it is a great tool to develop outstanding content taking care of the brand appearance, tone and core message to the world.

With all these information writers must be sure that whenever they write a text for your brand, they do it in the brand’s voice, include the brand’s values and is what your target audience loves.