What’s a style guide and why do I need one?

Sometimes referred to as “brand standards” or a “brand guide,” a style guide is a document that contains the entirety of your brand identity. In this month’s blog post, we’re going to walk through a real-world example from one of our clients to outline the importance of this vital document.

Creative Law Studio is a boutique, web-based law studio in Harrisburg, PA that specializes in trademark law. The founder, Monica, approached Brockberry with help in developing her brand identity.

Brand Platform

The first, and most important step, in our branding journey is the brand platform. This is a document that includes many of the vital aspect of your brand identity, including your values, positioning, credo, and more. Through a series of interviews with members of your organization, we will begin to compile the brand platform, which will serve as the roadmap for all marketing efforts moving forward.

For Creative Law Studio, it was important to highlight Monica’s background as an artist and her ability to work on a personal level with businesses of all sizes.

Logo Usage

As the most recognizable aspect of your brand, the logo section of the style guide comes next. In this section, you include all official logos of the brand as well as details on when and how to use them. Many style guides of large corporations will also show examples of how not to use the logo, whether that means stretching the dimensions or using the logo in incorrect colors.

For Creative Law Studio, it was important to differentiate between the usage of the three different logos. The primary logo includes Monica’s name because as a lawyer, her personality is the product in many ways. The secondary logo is simply the “Creative Law Studio” name, which can be used in a variety of different ways.

Color Palette

While this section of the style guide might seem obvious, once you create a cohesive color palette and institute it across all channels, your brand will immediately look more legitimate. This section includes samples of the colors as well as the hex code, a six-digit code used to perfectly match the shade of color.

In the style guide for Creative Law Studio, the colors are organized by how frequently they are used. There are also details on which colors should be used for accents, how colors should be used together, and more.

Brand Fonts

Similar to the color palette, having consistent fonts across your marketing materials helps create a more cohesive and professional look. We recommend listing when and where the fonts should be used, whether its headings and paragraphs or whatever guidelines fit for your brand.

For Creative Law Studio, we chose a heavy, bold font for the headings and an italic, serif font to contrast in the subheadings. For the paragraph body, we chose a clean, easily readable font.

Imagery

While this section isn’t found in every style guide (like the ones mentioned above), at Brockberry we find that it’s an important factor that most brands don’t think about. With the increased access to free, high-quality stock photos on the internet, many brands just use the first image that fits the criteria that they need. However, when this practice continues for a long time, the images don’t match one another and the brand loses its identity.

In the Creative Law Studio style guide, we show examples and outline the guidelines of what makes a good image. While many of the photos are stock, we can still create a cohesive look by choosing images with the same qualities and overlaying them with a brand color.

Additional Assets

The final section of this style guide is “Additional Assets” which just includes other things used in branded materials that help tie things together. For Creative Law Studio, we use the marble texture to give things a premium look and feel. We also use brush strokes in place of solid lines in order to emphasize Monica’s artistic background. This section is the most open-ended and can include anything from specific shapes to transitions in videos and more.

We hope this brief outline helps give you an idea of why your brand needs a style guide. If you’re interested in working with Brockberry to develop one, feel free to get in touch. We’re happy to help bring your brand to life.