What if you could have both? How to consistently showcase your best.
TIME SAVER #3 Your brand style guide
This is the secret tool the big brands use to ensure brand consistency. It informs contractors, employees, licensees, and manufacturers how to work with your brand so that their core message remains transparent and intact. Everything that is created with their brand style guide should look part of the collection. I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to work first hand with a fair few big brands, on both sides of the style guide.
Working with the style guide; to extract and transform the information visually into content, style, copy, product and packaging design. This ensures cohesive look and feel and maintains the brand personality and story.
“The attention to detail and interpretation of the style guide has been really excellent, which makes my job very easy indeed!” J.G. | Licensing Manager, London
And at the other end creating the brand style guide; collating all the brand information, refreshing their logo design, and creating brand assets to help empower companies with a comprehensive tool they can dip into every day and action, to achieve brand consistency across all they do.
“Love the brand style guide – looks great!” M.K. | Brand Licensing Agent, London
“The logo you have redrawn looks great, the spacing is much better and it works well stacked too” A.A. | Brand Licensing Agent, London
It sounds amazing! But what is a brand style guide?
It’s home to all things about your brand. The rules you set for your brand. How to use your logo. What colours your logo can appear in for use on light or dark backgrounds. Capturing your visual style. Denoting your brand values. Sharing your vision. It helps you to stay focused as you create your incredible content and services. It becomes a powerful filter for your ideas and product development. This gives you a framework to filter through and check whether a resource, opportunity, collaboration, product, event, partnership etc is a fit with your brand. So that you can dismiss or rework an idea so that it seamlessly aligns with your brand and your story.
Each style guide is unique and tailored to your individual needs, but here’s an outline of just some of what your brand style guide could include:
- your story
- brand vision and mission
- values
- what makes you refreshingly different
- who you help
- your logos
- main logo
- secondary logos
- integrity and use
- how you bring your brand to life
- brand colour palette
- your brand typography
- tone of voice
- your style
- illustration
- photography
- icons
- your copyright details
I’m a solopreneur, can I actually have a style guide of my own for my brand?
Yes! And it doesn’t have to be completed all in one go. Your style guide can be added to over time, growing organically as and when you need the different design assets and content. I’d definitely recommend having one, but don’t just take my word for it:
“I am so proud of my brand and it represents my business style so perfectly. I’m in the process of building new programs and now my Mechanic (wealth dynamics) is in full flow instead of me being stuck every day on photos, colors, font etc. She gave me clear instructions that I can work with every day. I couldn’t have done this without Becks and her amazing talent. She really is outstanding in her field.” J.P. | USA
How it works
It’s a collaboration in creating your style guide. No-one deeply knows your brand, what you do and why you do it, better than you. I work alongside you, to draw out and understand your values, collate the content, create the design assets you need and beautifully present it all in a digital file along with the individual design assets ready for you to use.
Ready to have:
- time dedicated to you and understanding your brand?
- to identify what really connects for your brand, creating you a distinctive look and feel teamed with guidance on how to apply?
- to save you time ongoing as you create and style your content with ease?
Confidently and cohesively showcase your brand style to tell your story in all that you create.
Contact me to chat through what you need from your style guide and where you want to be with your brand: becks@inkshed-designstudio.co.uk
