Do You Need a Style Guide? It’s a simple question: Do you need a style guide? And it has a simple answer: Yes. Any brand, company, blog or webpage that wants to create and maintain consistency and a professional feel should have a style guide. Style guides are a must for any publisher with multiple employees. What Is a Style Guide? A style guide is the ultimate resource for visual and writing tone for your brand. Style guides cover two big areas: visuals and writing. A style guide is a fluid document and once written should be updated regularly. MailChimp’s “Voice and Tone” style guide follows this concept. Getting Started Creating a style guide from scratch is not a task that you can complete in an hour. Branding definitions, styles and logotypes: This includes examples of how logos can and can’t be used, as well as fonts, sizes and color swatches. Font palette: List all the typefaces, sizes and colors that are acceptable. Images, icons and buttons: Define style, color, size and placement of each. Visual Style
Brand identity style guides from around the world This is great! The University of Connecticut has a nice one designed by Peter Good. Web and link to PDF version. Peter did a great job of differentiating the three identities a university typically has. – The academic and marketing identity (what most would think of as the main identity). – The athletics or mascot identity. UConn has a pretty simple color palette but, many academic systems also include extra Pantone colors to be used for marketing or just for the presidential or university seal (gold, etc.). Stanford University just redid their system too! I also like Vanderbilt University’s.
How to Write Your Business's Image Style Guide - Dummies Well-branded businesses have rules, called style guidelines, about how their brand images may be used. Image style guidelines protect the consistency of your business image in the marketplace. Create your business's style guidelines to steer how your business's brand and image are used: Logo: Your logo is the face of your business on marketing materials. Ensure that it is presented cleanly and without unnecessary alteration by answering the following questions in your style guidelines: When your logo appears in black ink, what color backgrounds may be used? Limit the number of fonts that you combine in any single marketing piece.
Create a Style Guide for Your Brand Even the smallest, simplest web presence needs consistency. Consistency of design, sure. But also of language. Consistency is reassuring. Your style guide is your starting point for ensuring your online presence is consistent. What is a style guide? A style guide is a document that provides guidelines for the way your brand must be presented. That might include visual styles—rules defining the way the brand will look—as well as language styles influencing the way the brand will sound or read. In some organisations, the style guide’s printed, kept in a ring binder, and laughingly referred to as the “brand bible”. In others it’s a simple electronic document containing images of the logo, a brand vocabulary, and a reference to a popular style manual, like the Chicago Manual of Style , which is to be used in any cases the house style guide doesn’t cover. What’s in a style guide? The last style guide I put together for a digital client came to 20 pages, and contained these sections: It’s done!
A List of Branding Style Guides: Corporate, Academic and Government Brand Manual/Logo Guideline Examples » The ENGINE Blog » ENGINE Industries: Atlanta, Georgia Web Design We’re about to pitch the creation of a branding style guide to one of our clients. I was putting together an example list of style guides used by well-known companies, planning to include the list in our proposal. But it seemed smarter to expand it into a gigantic list and post it here, so we can reuse it — and you can benefit from it too. First: What’s a branding style guide? Second: Why look at a brand guide made for somebody else’s company? A Short List Just want to see five or so decent style guides, mostly made by organizations you’ve heard of? The 2010 CensusClemson University: Very thorough, but includes lots of rationale in normal-human-speak.Corsair MemoryHeinekenKansas City Barbecue Society: You don’t have to be an intergalactic corporation to make sure your group’s voice is consistent.MapQuest: Super simple. The Long List ABANDON ALL HOPE OF NOT SEEING BRANDING GUIDES, YE WHO KEEP READING. Corporate Branding Style Guides (US-based) Corporate Branding Style Guides (Non-US-based)
How To Write A Style Guide | Intelligent Editing Introduction In publishing and media companies, use of a style guide is the norm. However, style guides can also be useful for any organization that prepares documents for clients and the public. This article is for organizations outside of the publishing industry who can benefit from the introduction of a style guide. A style guide is a reference point that sets standards for writing documents within your organization. Style guides offer you the chance to present your brand in a consistent way. The rest of this article is structured as follows: How Your Guide Will Be Read (aka 'The Facts of Life') To write an effective style guide, it is important to keep in mind that most people in your company will barely read it. “Remember that style guides are references, consulted when a question or problem arises, rather than books to be read as a training tool.” — Jean Hollis Weber, Developing a Departmental Style Guide Making Use of Existing Style Guides Things Not to Do Conclusion Bibliography
Sample Brand and Style Guide In an effort to streamline and document CPAC's design process and communication efforts, it created these brand guidelines. The document is designed include the necessary information while demonstrating CPAC's brand. The printed version acts as a tool, in that it functions similar to a paint swatch. A user can see how colors look side by side or against black or white text. The style guidelines, which offer specific information about CPAC's grammar, formatting and other style choices are located on the back of the guide to provide one tool for all communication material. Download this document CPAC Brand Guidelines.pdf 3.25 MB 12 pages More In This Series
Designing Style Guidelines For Brands And Websites Advertisement A website is never done. Everyone has worked on a project that changed so much after it launched that they no longer wanted it in their portfolio. One way to help those who take over your projects is to produce a style guide. Edward Tufte once said: “Great design is not democratic; it comes from great designers. Why Create A Style Guide? You’ll have an easy guide to refer to when handing over the project.Makes you look professional. Branding Guidelines: What To Include? Strategic Brand Overview This should be short and sweet. 1See Kew’s branding guidelines2. Kew uses strong photography in its “brand essence” message, with a few paragraphs that both inspire and define the brand. Logos For print and Web, most brands revolve around the logo. 3See Cunard’s branding guidelines4. Cunard provides many variations on its minimum sizes. 5See Think Brick’s branding guidelines6. Provide logos with different colors, and specify which colours are allowed. Spacing Colors Fonts Layouts and Grids (al)
Raising Standards: Tips for Creating a Brand Style Guide | Chalkboard Blog | Web Design, Marketing, Business and Charleston SC Protecting a brand’s identity can seem like a daunting task, especially when you need to communicate its importance to a client. That’s why it’s a great idea to include a Visual Standards Manual (aka brand style guide) with any logo you design for a client, so they have a reference point before making major decisions. The guide will protect them from diluting the logo’s message thus weakening the brand’s overall identity in the marketplace. The manual itself can range from a just a couple simple pages to what appears to be a thick novel. Obviously, what you offer depends on your clients’ specific needs. Step 1: Draw a layout. Step 2: Make a master. Step 3: Add a contents page and directives. Color Palette: Include Pantone colors for printing. Typography: Write out the entire alphabet and numbers 0-9 in each font chosen for their brand. Logo colors: Display the logo in the Primary color and also the Secondary colors (if any). Step 4: They’ll have questions.
10 magically meticulous design style guides | Branding This is heading directly into geek territory. But we are self-confessed geeks, particularly when it comes to logo design, typography and pictograms. And that leads us to the meticulously regulated world of brand style manuals... A style manual, or style guide, is a set of standards for the design of documents, signage, and any other form of other brand identifier. The reason for their existence is to ensure complete uniformity in style and formatting wherever the brand is used to ensure no dilution of that brand. We love the obsessive nature of these, and so here we've gathered 12 of the best to inspire you when you create your own brand style guides... The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Graphics Standards Manual was created by Danne & Blackburn in 1974 when NASA changed from its original crest-based logo to the 'worm' logotype that we are now familar with. The manual has recently been revived thanks to a Kickstarter campaign to fund its reissue. 02. 03. 04. 05. 06. 07.