Edward Boatman • Apr 19th, 2022
A style guide is the gateway to your brand. It’s a way to manage your digital assets including all of the necessary information about your brand’s content and visuals, from your color palette to your use of the Oxford comma (or not).
Anyone who touches your brand should know exactly what their asset should look like from the style guide. This helps keep your output consistent and makes sure your brand’s story stays legible.
There are many benefits to a strong, cohesive brand. For one, customers will be able to instantly recognize you and know what you stand for. It can also increase loyalty and attract new business.
Understanding digital asset management can be daunting. For those looking to build their own brand books and organize their digital assets, we’ve created a list of tips, examples, and style guide templates to get you started.
Table of Contents:
A style guide should include everything that encompasses your brand, from visual elements like fonts, visuals and colors, to written elements like grammar, tone and voice. Your guide should be a one-stop shop for those looking to produce content for your brand.
A few musts for a style guide include:
A good style guide, like Nagarro’s, is a valuable resource to content creators, product designers, freelancers, PR teams, external agencies and anyone else who touches your brand. A bad one is stale, disjointed and unhelpful. It’s easy to lose track of assets buried in Google folders or drivers. This means people may not know where to get their branding questions answered.
Need to create a comprehensive style guide for your brand? Lingo can help with our brand guideline platform. Sign up for a free trial to create your guide and explore the style guide templates to get started.
With just one page to work with, you need to make sure your brand comes through and anyone looking at your guide can see the full picture. Prioritize the most important information and present it in a clear, succinct way that will make sure your message comes through.
Why we like it: You can say a lot with a little, and perhaps no one knows that more than Google. Google’s simple yet comprehensive brand guide makes one page go a long way.
One Page Brand Guidelines Template
More examples:
The colors you use convey the mood and tone of your entire brand — no pressure. So to make sure your content always includes the right hue (no not that green, this green), your color style guide should have all the information people need to fit your brand’s palette.
Why we like it: Walmart does a great job of explaining how to use their colors and defining exactly which shade to use. This keeps their branding in line and consistent, creating a color palette that people recognize.
More Examples:
People can get picky about fonts. Yet, fonts can become iconic for brands, movies, books, etc. A swirly script might make you think of Disney, while crisp clean lettering reminds you of Apple. Through your brand’s font, you can evoke emotion and feeling while tying a certain look to your brand’s identity.
Why we like it: Nagarro explains the emotion they’re trying to convey with their brand’s font choice before diving into the logistics of how to use and download their font.
More Examples:
Social media is your gateway to millions of global views. That’s why many companies have firm, specific guidelines for what their social media presence should look like.
Why we like it: Nagarro has taken the time to provide brand-approved social media templates for a variety of devices, making their brand accessible for everyone.
Social Media Brand Guidelines Template
More examples:
Do you want to write in a conversational tone that makes your readers feel like they’re your friends? Or do you want to write in a succinct, technical way that establishes you as a thought leader? Your editorial style guide will help shape the way you communicate.
Why we like it: There is a lot to cover in editorial style guides, and Walmart’s quick-start guide covers the most important basics up top.
Editorial Style Guide Template
More examples:
Your brand book will be a long, comprehensive overview of your brand’s visual story. In your brand book, you should include everything an outsider would need to know about your visuals and feel. These brand book examples do a great job of capturing their respective brands.
Why we like it: Skype’s brand book includes a charming, funny comic that showcases their brand’s accessible and relatable style.
More examples:
Creating graphics that are unique, appealing and interesting? No small task. But the graphics behind your brand breathe life into your outreach and storytelling. Your design language speaks to your customers just as loudly as your content.
Why we like it: Mailchimp provides the “why” throughout their branding document, giving readers helpful information that they can build on.
More examples:
It can be true that a picture is worth a thousand words. So when you’re working on your photography style, you should want to capture something special. Photography style guides show how to capture real-life images that tell your story.
Why we like it: Walmart reaffirms their commitment to diversity and inclusion in their photography guide, positioning themselves as a store for everyone.
More examples:
Companies that sell products have to be relatable, accessible and appealing to markets. Your retail style guide should show how to advertise and talk about your products while engaging with your customers in a way that entices them to buy.
Why we like it: Decathlon identifies two major target markets and breaks them down into what they mean and how to appeal to them.
More examples:
Building a style guide starts with a story. What are you trying to tell your audience? How do you want them to feel?
Pick your colors, logo, images and copy guidelines to fit your brand’s story. And throughout your guide, make sure you’re thinking about why and how your style elements work for your brand.
While building your brand book, you might run into a few hiccups. With so much to cover — from colors, to logo, to font and social media — it’s easy to let your Google Drive fall into disarray. Staying organized is key for a style guide, though. People should be able to find the answers and information they need with ease.
That’s where Lingo can help. Sign up for a free trial of Lingo that you can use to build an organized and efficient style guide.
Building a brand should be fun. It’s an opportunity to create something interesting that you’ll present to the world. That’s why you shouldn’t run into headaches while working on yours — Lingo can help keep your style guide efficient, clean and organized.