The Power of Style Guides: A Key Player in Successful Branding and Tips on creating your own

When you think of successful global brands like Apple or Dunkin’ Donuts, there are certain visual elements and tones of communication that instantly come to mind. You're not just picturing a product or service, but an entire sensory experience associated with that brand. This kind of robust and memorable brand identity is not a coincidence, but the result of a meticulously crafted and consistently followed tool called a 'Style Guide.' 

If you're new to branding or even marketing in general, you might be wondering, "What exactly is a Style Guide, and why is it so important?" If you are familiar, as an independent designer, you may be wondering “Why do I need a Style Guide?”. Buckle up, because you're about to discover a game-changing tool for successful branding that will also help improve your efficiency.

Creating a Style Guide for your brand that can be used on patterns and product descriptions is an easy way to save time and develop consistent branding. It is also a great tool if you work with a VA (virtual assistant) or Tech Editor to maintain consistency in all your works. Here is an easy checklist of key items you’ll want to include in your Style Guide:

Keeping your logo consistent across all of your patterns and products is the number one rule of brand consistency. This includes colors, proportions, and how/where it appears.

Any other graphics that are part of your brand should also be consistent. Include in your Style Guide how and where these are used. Include things like: sizes of images and placement; borders and collage layout, etc. Don’t forget to include your color palette as related to images and graphics.

There are so many options for fonts and families that it is easy to get off track. Creating some guidelines will help. Questions to ask: Are you sticking with one font family and using variations of that (ie: bold or italic) only? Will you use one font family for paragraphs and a different one for headings? Are uppercase and lowercase being used consistently? Once you land on what you want, create a Font Guide within your Style Guide for consistent branding.

Rules about consistent font leads into the discussion of consistent titles, headings and subheadings. What font are you using for these and is it always the same one? What size are they in comparison to each other and to your paragraphs? Is one (or more) of them a specific color or always in bold? Create a page or two and decide which best relates your brand voice then add that to your Style Guide.

You have so much freedom here to format your patterns and products as you like, but you want to make sure it looks uniform each time. For example, is punctuation used in some places and not others, and is there a reason for it? Do you use bullet points? Do you tend to write out words or use abbreviations? What symbols do you use to denote a repeat in your patterns? Are full sentences always used?

Your photos, charts and other images should have guidelines as well. Do they always appear on a certain page of your pattern? For photos, do you want to stick to a certain shape and/or aspect ratio? What details pertain to your charted instructions or diagrams that you should keep the same each time?

This is important information that should be a part of every pattern you’ve designed. Equally as important is that it appears consistently across all of your patterns.

This refers to all of the space surrounding all of the elements we’ve already discussed above. Is spacing consistent after your headings? After each paragraph? Surrounding your images?

Margins are easy to set as a template, so find what works for you and use it all the time. Page numbers are also something to consider, so what font, size and color are these and where do they appear? Look through some of your patterns to find what you haven’t addressed yet and add it to your Style Guide.

At its core, a Style Guide is a document outlining your branding rules and it contains everything from the exact colors and fonts used in a logo to the tone and voice used in written content. It's a playbook that ensures consistency across all communication and marketing materials, from website design and social media posts to email newsletters and packaging.

By asking yourself the questions above you can create your own Style Guide and be set up for successful and consistent branding.