Creating a brand guide is one of the most important first steps towards establishing your business– AKA your brand. Your brand’s image is the first thing customers see and associate with your company.

When you think of your favorite company, what do you remember? You can most likely picture the colors they like to use, the font and image of their logo, the types of images they like to post on their Instagram and the language they use to write their ads and captions. This, my friend, is the result of consistent branding.

Before the creative part begins, you’ll have to brainstorm just a little bit. The first thing you have to ask yourself is, “What is my brand story?”

This might seem hard to grasp at first, but essentially, it’s how you want your brand to be perceived. You’ll have to determine the qualities that describe your business, the values and the audience you’re looking to attract.

When creating a brand guide, there are a few aspects to include: fonts, logo, imagery, color palette and the tone of your business. Look at the example of ours to understand what goes into establishing a consistent brand image.

Having a guide will allow you to have an outline for content creators and new employees to reference in order to keep all branded materials consistent. Here are the basics:

1. Fonts – The font name you’ll be sticking to for most of your text styling. Though there are some exceptions and secondary fonts from time to time.
2. Logo – The brand image your audience will associate you with and distinguish from competitors.
3. Imagery – The image style you want to utilize to represent your business.
4. Color palette – The colors you’ll be using throughout your site, social media platforms, and graphics.
5. Language of your company – This establishes the tone in which your company is going to use to communicate with your customers, whether that’s playful, witty, serious or a combination!

You want your business to set you apart from what’s in the market. Having your own brand guide will help build your brand story and allow you, employees and customers to stay true to your brand.

If you need help building your brand guide to maintain a strong presence on social media, or if you’re rebranding and need a new logo, we’ve got you covered. Fill out the form below to set up a free 30-minute consultation with our owner, Kaitlyn!