What is a branding styleguide?

A branding style guide is a document that describes the visual identity and visual hierarchy of your brand. It’s a tool that helps you communicate your design system to others, without having to constantly repeat yourself.
Visual identity refers to the overall look and feel of your brand. Visual hierarchy is how similar elements are arranged within a visual hierarchy. Together they help answer some of the following questions: What do we see when we look at our brand? How do we show new design concepts in an organized way? Is everything aligned with other visual system elements we use?
In this blog post, you’ll learn about branding style guides, why you need one, what makes one work well, and examples of different types from real-world brands.

What is branding?

Branding is the process of identifying a company or person with a recognizable visual identity. This is accomplished through various branding techniques and by defining and communicating a visual hierarchy.
In this post, you will learn about branding style guides and why they are important for your brand. You’ll also learn about some examples of different types from real-world brands.
As you go through the post, you’ll learn about the importance of building a visual hierarchy within your design system, what makes one work well, and why it’s important to create one in the first place.

What is a branding styleguide?

A branding style guide is a document that describes the visual identity and visual hierarchy of your brand. It’s a tool that helps you communicate your design system to others, without having to constantly repeat yourself. Visual identity refers to the overall look and feel of your brand. Visual hierarchy is how similar elements are arranged within a visual hierarchy. Together they help answer some of the following questions: What do we see when we look at our brand? How do we show new design concepts in an organized way? Is everything aligned with other visual system elements we use?
In this blog post, you’ll learn about branding style guides, why you need one, what makes one work well, and examples of different types from real-world brands.

Why do you need a branding style guide?

A branding style guide helps you communicate your design system to others, without having to constantly repeat yourself. It helps you streamline your communication and avoid misunderstandings with others. In addition, it’s a great way to show off the quality of your design work, as well as provide visual guidance for new employees who are joining your company.
It’s also important to note that a branding styleguide is not your brand’s logo and/or website. That would be more like a visual identity statement or visual hierarchy. A branding style guide can help with that too, but it adds a lot more value in the process of communicating design ideas with other people on your team.

The benefits of a brand style guide

The benefits of a brand style guide are plentiful. They help to align your design system, make it easier to work on new projects, and provide the framework for new designers.
Brand style guides also improve communication across multiple platforms. For example, when working with a team of designers, you can use your brand style guide to organize resources and help ensure that everyone understands the same concepts. If members have different opinions about what should be included in your document, you can reach consensus more easily than other methods.
Lastly, brand style guides can act as a form of internal documentation by providing an easy-to-follow system for your employees. This helps keep the company consistent and provides guidelines for new hires or freelancers who are working on projects for the company.

How to write a brand style guide

A branding style guide is an essential tool for your design team. It’s a document that describes the visual identity of your brand and how it should be implemented.
For example, if you’re designing a logo, it will give a lot of details about the logo’s color palette, size, font, and placement on various interface elements throughout your website or application. A style guide also helps designers and developers in their work to ensure consistency across designs.
To write a brand style guide, here are some important things to consider:

• What are the goals of your style guide?
• Who will have access to the style guide?
• How can users view the content? Will it be accessible offline or only online?
• What level of detail is needed for each section? Is there anything that doesn’t need to be included? Does everything need to be included from scratch or do you want to reuse content from other sources?
• Who will maintain the style guide? Is this someone internally or is this a collaborative effort between designers and developers?

Tips for writing a successful brand style guide

If you want to get the most use out of your branding style guide, keep these tips in mind:
It should be clear what it is and why you need it.
Include a timeline for changes in your brand.
Show how each component looks on the website or in print materials.
Use positive language about what works well.

Conclusion

A branding styleguide is one of the best ways to ensure that your brand is consistent and recognizable. It ensures that your brand has a cohesive feel and is consistent across all of your marketing materials. It is important to define your brand identity, which includes your brand values, personality and unique selling point, to ensure that your brand doesn’t become generic.