What are Brand Style Guides and Brand Guidelines?
And why do you need them?
Brand Style Guides and Brand Guidelines serve distinct yet complementary purposes in maintaining a brand's consistency and integrity. Brand Style Guides focus on the visual and verbal presentation of a brand, detailing specific elements like logos, color palettes, typography, and tone of voice to ensure a cohesive appearance across various platforms. On the other hand, Brand Guidelines encompass a broader scope, covering the brand's mission, values, target audience, messaging, and overall strategy. These guidelines ensure that all brand communications align with its core principles and strategic goals. Both are essential for creating a consistent, professional, and trustworthy brand image, streamlining creative processes, and building customer trust and loyalty. For your brand, having both guides will help maintain the style you aim for, ensuring it resonates effectively with your audience.
How many pages of brand guides do I need?
The length and depth of your guidelines should depend on the size, status, and current mission of your organization and we can help you determine the best route for your business. A single page to three pager is recommended for small businesses that don't have a lot of marketing collateral/social media engagement, or if you have a very small staff. If you have a larger staff, multiple departments, lots of social engagement and a variety of mediums to promote your business, multi page guidelines are recommended. More in depth guidelines translate to more specificity in the rules governing your brand's messaging. This gives your team a clearer grasp on how to communicate your brand's messaging to its followers.
This is an example of multi-page Brand Guidelines.
