A style guide shares information about your company’s visual brand, and when used properly can provide consistency across your digital and print collateral. It should include rules about logo uses, color schemes, and font choices, but may also discuss things like layouts and photography.
Style guides should reflect your business’s brand, so wait until you develop a brand identity before drafting one. Once finalized, a style guide can be shared with designers, writers, or web developers to help them understand how their work should fit to match your brand. It should be followed on all outputs, including social media, web, print, letterhead, and business cards.
Your logo is one of the most important components of your branding strategy. Your style guide should include acceptable logo uses and iterations. For example, what are the options for color and black and white printing? If you have a small space and can’t fit the business name, can the designer use just the graphic (such as TikTok’s music note)? By limiting options and staying consistent, your logo and company will remain recognizable.
Most companies have one primary color scheme that matches their logo. Colors should be versatile and complementary. It’s important to specify both the color’s hex value (digital) and Pontone value (print) so that everyone can use the exact same colors.
Your style guide should also specify the 1-3 fonts your brand uses. These fonts will be used on all communications, including even possibly your logo. The style guide can also be very specific and include header styles, weight, and spacing. Some special fonts aren’t available on all computers, so be mindful of the fonts you use in email communications. All text colors, styles, and sizes should be easily legible.
Style guides are incredibly useful so that everyone in your company can stay on brand. If you don’t know where to start, most word processing and digital design tools have templates you can use to help you get started.
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