Edward Boatman • May 27th
Building a strong and consistent brand helps you stand out among a sea of competitors. From your brand colors and logo to the brand voice you adopt, every aspect of your brand has an impact on your audience. Maintaining consistent branding is key to connecting with your customers and building brand recognition.
If you want to build a strong, recognizable brand, you can start by creating a brand book. Brand books help guide everything you do as a brand, from the content you create to how you communicate with your customers.
What is a brand book, and how can Lingo help you create one? Check out our ultimate brand book guide to get started.
A brand book is a book that outlines every aspect of your brand identity. Brand books are designed to be a comprehensive resource for your brand, encompassing everything from your brand’s visual identity to your core values and vision.
Brand books can be used to guide everything from content creation to public relations. A great brand book makes it easy to collaborate across different teams without sacrificing consistency. These guidelines are used by brand managers, designers, writers, and marketing teams.
Custom brand books comprise several parts, including your core values, vision, and visual brand elements. We’ll break down each component of a branding book later in this guide.
Brand books and style guides are used by team members within your organization and external partners and agencies you collaborate with. From marketing to customer service, building a brand book helps you shape everything your brand does.
Marketing teams use brand books to guide public-facing brand communication. Whether you’re creating video ads for YouTube or advertising through social media, internal teams, and external ad agencies can stay aligned with your established brand identity thanks to your brand book. That goes beyond using your brand colors and typography. Your core values and brand vision can also be woven into your marketing campaigns.
When hiring someone to build a website, write a blog post, or design graphics for your brand, they rely on your brand guidelines book to deliver content that aligns with your brand. Whether you’re outsourcing content creation or working with internal team members, everyone who creates content for your brand should have a copy of your brand book.
Customer service plays a key role in how people perceive brands. If you want people to perceive your brand positively, your core values and vision should be incorporated into your customer service. Your brand book helps customer service reps stick to your voice and tone.
From press releases to public events, your brand book can also help guide your brand’s public relations. When it’s time to make an important announcement or share news about your brand, you can do it in a way that aligns with your overall strategy.
Using a branding style guide can benefit your brand in several ways, increasing team efficiency and consistency. Check out some of these great benefits of building a brand book.
Whether you’re talking about public relations, customer service, or social media content, everything you do as a brand impacts customer perception. A brand guide helps you keep everyone on the same page regarding brand messaging and identity. As a result, it’s easier to build trust with customers and create a recognizable brand.
Increased brand recognition is one of the most direct effects of consistent brand messaging. Think about some of the biggest brands in the world. One of the reasons those brands are instantly recognizable is because they’re consistent.
Building brand recognition helps you attract new customers and earns you a positive reputation in your market. With the constantly growing competition in today’s business world, finding ways to separate yourself from the competition is crucial.
When writing a blog post or working on a marketing campaign, having your digital assets scattered throughout several locations slows you down. The more time it takes to create content, the more money you have to spend. Your brand book helps streamline content creation and marketing by giving internal teams and external partners easy access to everything they need to know about your brand.
If you’re hiring a new team member or working with an external agency for the first time, getting them up to speed with your brand can take a while. With a branding book, onboarding is as simple as sharing a link or brand book PDF with whoever you’re onboarding.
Even if you’re a smaller brand that doesn’t hire new talent or work with new agencies often, streamlining the onboarding process can save you time and money. A consistent onboarding process also ensures everyone representing your brand is aligned with everything from your core values to your brand voice.
If you’ve looked into building a brand book, you might notice there are different types and styles of brand books. While most brand books are the same in general idea, other brands have different approaches to branding and creating a brand guide. Brand books can focus on one aspect of your brand, like your brand identity or visual elements, or encompass everything.
When most people use the term brand book, they talk about a comprehensive brand book. Comprehensive brand books are designed to give a detailed overview of every aspect of your branding, including your brand voice, core values, visual elements, and more.
Building this type of brand book gives you a comprehensive resource you can share with internal teams and external partners. When creating a comprehensive brand book, try to be as detailed as possible to answer every question someone might have about your brand.
Some organizations create campaign-specific branding books to launch a particular marketing campaign or rebranding effort. These brand books typically focus on specific elements of your brand that are important to the campaign.
For example, a brand book for a marketing campaign might include your latest visual identity and your brand voice. If your core values and vision don’t need to be incorporated into a specific campaign, you can leave those elements out of your campaign branding book.
Detailed brand books are great for people who need to understand your brand inside and out, but that’s not always the case. Quick reference brand books are a simple way to provide key details about your brand without including every detail. Creating a quick reference branding book saves you time, plus it’s easier for the people you share it with to find the information they need.
When you create a quick reference brand guide, use headings and bulleted lists to make everything easy to find. Someone unfamiliar with your brand should be able to see key details like your brand colors and typography at a glance.
Depending on your brand's products or services, you might use seasonal brand books for your seasonal marketing campaign. Some brands, from car dealerships and manufacturers to online retailers, completely overhaul their marketing campaigns during the holiday season.
Your seasonal brand book can include any changes you want to make to your branding based on the current season or holiday. If you rebrand for each holiday, you can create a comprehensive seasonal brand book that includes your style guidelines for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other major holidays.
Building a brand guidelines book starts with understanding the individual parts. You should include several key elements in your brand book, from your core values and mission to your logo, colors, and typography. Here’s a complete breakdown of all the key elements you should include in your brand identity book.
Your core values as a brand are the beliefs you stand for and use to guide your brand. For example, some brands are committed to sustainability or diversity. These core values often resonate with customers and attract them to a particular brand. If your brand is committed to sustainable sourcing and packaging, people who share those values are more likely to trust your brand.
Your brand mission is also an essential aspect of your brand. Your brand mission is a statement that clearly outlines your brand's purpose, your goals, and what you plan to do to achieve those goals and serve your target audience. An effective brand statement should be timeless and focused on your actions as a brand. Like your core values, your brand mission helps customers better understand what your brand represents to form a deeper connection.
Some of the biggest brands in the world take on an identity of their own as they grow. Brands like Gatorade and Apple have specific brand voices and tones people recognize. When you see a TV commercial from a major brand, you can almost immediately recognize the tone and voice.
Your brand voice and personality shine through in everything you do, from your products or services to your website and marketing campaigns. The content people create represents your brand, so your voice and personality should be present in everything your brand does.
Finding your brand voice can take time, and there’s a learning curve. As you identify your target audience and your core values as a brand, you can use that information to shape your brand voice and personality.
If there are two things that people instantly recognize about major brands, it’s the logo and the color palette. McDonald’s has the Golden Arches and the classic red and yellow color palette.
Netflix has the “N” logo and the signature red and black color palette. Even the Jazz design featured on Sweetheart Cup Company disposable cups is instantly recognizable and beloved.
Your branding book should include your logo, color palette, and any variations you might use. Some brands, like Nike, use various colors in their visual branding. You might also have seasonal versions of your logo and color palette that you use during specific holidays.
You don’t have to slap your logo on every content you create for your brand, but your logos and colors should be present when it makes sense. Whether you’re building a website or designing a graphic for social media, incorporating your brand’s visual identity is key.
Typography is another key element of your brand’s visual identity. Typography encompasses every visual aspect of text, including the font type, font size, alignment, white space, hierarchy, and color. Consistent typography can significantly increase brand recognition, so your branding book should include every detail of your brand typography.
Think about some of the largest brands. Part of what makes brands like Disney, Lego, and Coca-Cola so recognizable is the fact that they use a unique font. If the words “Coca-Cola” were written across a can or bottle in Arial font, it wouldn’t have nearly the same impact. That’s what you’re trying to achieve by using consistent typography.
From your website to social media and beyond, you’ll need a designer to create graphics for your brand at some point. Just like your website and social media accounts should align with your branding, so should your graphics.
Graphic style guides let designers know how to use your brand's visual elements. You can cover topics like when to use different versions of your logo, when to use other fonts, and how to incorporate colors in graphics.
Your graphic style guides can also be used to guide video content creation. Whether you’re creating charts and other graphics for a blog post or a video ad for social media, a style book helps streamline content creation.
Now that you know the basics of the branding book, it’s time to focus on building a brand book to streamline content creation and maintain consistency across platforms. We’ll walk you through each step of creating a brand guidelines book and show you how Lingo can help you create a more effective branding book.
While some branding elements can change based on your target audience, clearly defining your brand's unshifting core is essential. A brand overview includes your core values, mission, and the key characteristics that make your brand unique. Your brand overview gives you a clear picture of your identity as a brand, helping you shape your visual identity to align with your brand.
Defining your target audience is a good way to lay the foundation for your brand style guide. Your target audience impacts every aspect of branding, from your brand voice and tone to the visual identity you use to represent your brand. If your target audience is younger and focused on sustainability, that should be reflected in your brand identity. If you have an older target audience that is mainly luxury-focused, your branding will look very different.
When your brand is a faceless entity only represented by products or services, it’s harder to connect with customers. Creating a brand personality is essential to connecting with customers on a deeper level, so it’s one of the first steps of creating a brand guide. Your brand personality is a combination of your brand's psychological, emotional, and behavioral patterns.
Think of Apple as an example. Apple is known for innovation and simplicity, woven into the brand’s identity.
Your brand voice and tone help reinforce your brand personality and identity. Think about how you want your brand to sound to your target audience. Do you want to motivate and inspire people? Do you want to be playful and fun? Will people connect with your brand more if you use simple, professional language? Choosing your voice is up to you, but every brand should have a voice.
If your brand already has a strong visual identity, complete with logos, color palettes, and typography, ensure those visual elements are represented in your branding style guide. You can include any alternate versions of your logo, font, or colors, but provide a clear explanation for when various logos and colors should be used.
You can create a brand book PDF, but your book should be updated regularly to reflect any changes to your brand. If someone has an outdated PDF, they cannot access your latest guidelines and digital assets.
Lingo makes building a brand book easy. Lingo allows you to create a digital brand book to share with team members, partners, and stakeholders. Use custom domains and branding to make your brand book unique to your brand, and store all your digital assets in one convenient location with Lingo’s digital asset manager.
Sign up for Lingo to start your free trial, or book a demo to learn how Lingo can help you simplify your digital brand guidelines and digital asset management.