The Ultimate Guide to Visual and Non-Visual Brand Guidelines
What Are Brand Guidelines?
Brand guidelines are a set of rules created to describe and outline various aspects of a brand to its team members.
Usually built out as a digital booklet or slideshow presentation, brand guidelines include visual components such as the brand logo, colour palette, and typography as well as non-visual components like the brand voice and tone.
You might be able to operate your business without developing brand guidelines, but if you hope to grow your brand and team, the value of having one is undeniable.
Why Are Brand Guidelines Important?
Developing and maintaining consistency on all fronts is important to building a strong, trustworthy brand in the eyes of your customer.
From the sizing of your brand logo, to how you interact with your audience, every single component of your brand guideline should work to unify your brand.
Brand guidelines should function as the definitive source for your team when they want to learn all there is about your brand.
It is the ultimate reference for all the dos and don’ts of your brand and is great for onboarding new team members or providing refreshers when needed.
Because of this, it’s best to create brand guidelines that are as detailed as possible so that there is no misinterpretation or confusion from your team on what anything means.
The rules outlined should be strict and not allow for deviation.
If there are specific situations that allow for creative freedom or there are exceptions to any of your brand guidelines, then they should be clearly specified and defined.
Do you need help with your creative design strategy, brand identity and guidelines?
Visual Brand Guidelines
Visual brand guidelines are the rules developed for any aspect of your brand that you can actually see.
This includes, but is not limited to, proper brand logo usage, typography hierarchy, and colour palette restrictions.
Your visual brand components can show up everywhere: your website, social media posts, profile pictures, creative ads, and more.
Clearly defining your visual brand guidelines helps ensure consistency across all channels and mediums.
At The Branded Agency, we specialise in building brands and developing brand guidelines that are perfect for your company.
If you’re looking to set your brand up for success, book a call with us today and we can help you lay the necessary foundation for a strong brand.
Who Uses Visual Brand Guidelines?
Everyone on your team should at least be aware of your visual brand guidelines, but they are important to the success of any and all of your designers.
Whether you’re training and onboarding a newly hired designer or one of your seasoned designers needs to complete a quick sanity check - having a detailed, and up-to-date brand guideline document is a must.
Visual brand guidelines come especially in handy when there are projects that need to be completed in a pinch with a quick turnaround.
Having a brand bible, brand style guide, brand guidelines or branding guidelines to reference, saves your designers time, confusion, and headache.
What is a Brand Style Guide?
A style guide is a document that outlines the rules and standards for how your brand should be presented across different platforms.
It includes things like logo usage, colour palette, typography, design elements, imagery style, brand messaging and tone of voice.
Why Do You Need a Brand Style Guide?
Having a style guide helps to ensure that all your brand assets look cohesive and uniform no matter where they're used.
It saves you time by eliminating the need to constantly reinvent the wheel when creating content or visuals for your brand.
Plus, style guides are invaluable when it comes to updating your brand's look or working with external partners such as designers, photographers and writers.
What are the different types of brand style guides?
There are several types of style guides that you could create depending on the size and complexity of your brand.
It can range from a simple style guide just containing logo usage rules, to more comprehensive document that includes all aspects of branding.
Comparing a simple Brand Style Guide to Comprehensive Branding Guidelines
A simple style guide is more suitable for small businesses with minimal assets and features rules on the use of your logo, colour palette, typography and design elements.
On the other hand, a comprehensive brand style guideline should cover all facets of your brand including style rules, brand messaging, tone of voice and visuals style.
It should also include copywriting style guidelines, photography style guide and social media style guide.
How to Create a Brand Style Guide
The first step in creating a style guide is to define your brand's visual identity.
You should start by looking at the elements of design—colour palette, typography style, logo usage, etc.—and decide on the look and feel of your brand.
Once you have a strong visual identity in place you can start to create your style guide.
When it comes to formatting your style guide make sure it's easy to navigate and understand.
Include sections such as Brand Basics (name, tagline, logo style, colour palette), Typography (typefaces and font sizes to use), Visuals style (photography guidelines, vector style guide, imagery style) and Brand Messaging (tone of voice, copywriting style).
Logo Guidelines
Just as important as what your brand logo looks like is how it’s used and presented.
Having a stellar logo loses its impact if you or your team are using the logo incorrectly or making adjustments to the design that don’t align with your brand.
Whether you have a team of designers or are creating visual media yourself, it’s important to stick to your logo usage guidelines.
Brand guidelines for your logo typically cover details like the logo design itself, acceptable colour variations, clearspace, scaling, aspect ratio, placement, etc.
Having these rules in place ensures that even if you use different colours, that your logo looks consistent everywhere, from your website, to your product packaging.
Reach out to us if you need a new logo created for your brand or want some logo usage and branding guidelines developed for your existing one.
Colour Guidelines
In addition to your brand logo, colour usage is a large component of your brand identity.
The colours you use, how you use them, and what you use them for, are all important things to consider and outline in your colour guidelines.
These guidelines cover colour usage beyond just your logo; they include the colours you use for your website, your social media posts, digital or physical advertisements, and more.
The colours you use should express your brand in the best way possible.
They also set the mood, tone, and feel of your brand so it’s important to be consistent and avoid colours that may contradict how you wish to represent your business.
Included within your colour guidelines are details regarding the approved colour palette, tones, and gradients for your brand as well as your colour hierarchy.
Your colour hierarchy outlines which colours in your palette take priority - which ones are your dominant colours and which ones are better used as accents.
At The Branded Agency, our team of talented designers are ready to help you explore the best colour options for your brand and can develop a set of colour guidelines for you - we’re only a click away!
Typography Guidelines
Typography is about more than just choosing a font that you like.
Instead, typography refers to the art and technique of arranging words and letters in a way that makes the text appear legible, clear, and visually appealing.
The font type, font style, and font size you choose affects how you are perceived as a brand and just like your logo and colour palette, how you use them is equally as important and what you use.
If you choose the team at The Branded Agency to help develop typography guidelines for your brand, we’ll go over your primary and secondary typography, typography uses, as well as web-safe typography to suit your brand.
Iconography Guidelines
Iconography guidelines describe the type and style of the icons you use and where to use them.
The iconography for your brand should complement your brand identity, whether they’re bright and colourful or subdued and minimalistic.
Icons can be used throughout your website, for social media posts, or as buttons. Whatever they’re used for, it’s best that they are easily recognizable and universally understood.
Illustration and Graphic Guidelines
Using illustrations and graphics are a great way to convey your message and strengthen your brand identity.
When building out your guidelines for illustrations and graphics, remember to specify the art style and colours you’ll use.
Do you have a collection of recurring characters created for your brand? When, where, and how should you use them?
Answering these questions will help unify your brand across all channels and platforms.
Photography Guidelines
If applicable, having photography guidelines for your brand will help ensure your photos and videos are consistent with the rest of your brand identity, or at the very least consistent with each other.
Subject matter, composition, framing, lighting, and storytelling are all details you can define when building out your photography guidelines.
Adhere to your photography rules, whether they’re photos of your product on your website or pictures for your Instagram feed, to increase professionalism and effectiveness.
Coming up with a plan for how you want photos or videos on your social media pages to look (and sticking to that plan) will help you build a stronger presence online. Another thing to consider is whether you’ll be reposting user-generated content.
If so, you might want to have guidelines for the type of photos and content you’re okay with reposting to your own feed so you can continue to maintain your brand’s look and feel.
Looking to hire a photographer? Checkout our blog on how much does product photography cost?
Guidelines for Other Creative Assets
Creative assets are the visual elements that help promote your brand and convey a message.
This can include digital assets like images, audio files, thumbnails, and gifs, as well as physical assets like merchandise, promotional material, and marketing collateral.
Many of the other guidelines we’ve gone over so far (colour, typography, etc.) will affect how these creative assets look and feel, but if you can develop a specific guideline for any of these creative assets individually or as a whole if you need.
However you choose to outline the rules and restrictions for your brand, make sure they are clear so that everyone on your team can follow them.
Need help developing or maintaining your creative assets? We can help with that too.
Our experienced team will make sure that all your creative assets are aligned with your brand identity.
Non-Visual Brand Guidelines
Non-visual brand guidelines are the set of rules developed for any characteristic of your brand that you can’t necessarily see.
While many of your non-visual guidelines will translate into mediums that are visual (website content, copywriting, social media posts, etc.), we consider the following areas to be non-visual as it pertains to how your brand acts and presents itself.
Many of your non-visual brand guidelines can be developed as a communication strategy guide which will typically outline criteria and rules in areas including, but not limited to: brand voice, brand tone, brand attitude, brand story, and key messages.
Who Uses Non-Visual Brand Guidelines?
Similar to your visual brand guidelines, it’s important that everyone on your team familiarise themselves with your non-visual brand guidelines as well.
Your non-visual guidelines are especially important for your content writers, copywriters, copy editors, social media managers, etc., but will undoubtedly come in handy for anyone who is in a position where they will be communicating with your audience or speaking on your behalf.
Knowing how to interact and engage with customers, recognizing what words to use (or not use), and understanding your brand’s attitude is imperative to delivering a strong, consistent message.
Without clear non-visual brand guidelines like a communication strategy guide, it can become difficult to know how to effectively communicate with your target audience.
Brand Communication Guidelines: Brand Voice and Tone
It starts with your communication objectives and principles, which you can use to define the style of your brand. You should also consider a style guide on how you communicate with different audiences, such as customers, partners and employees. This style guide should include guidelines such as tone of voice, style of writing (casual or formal), word choice and language.
Brand Voice
Your brand voice describes your brand’s distinct personality when it comes to communicating with your audience and is often shaped by your core values.
The words you use and how you use them all impact your brand voice.
It’s what your customers hear when reading anything that your brand writes.
Developing your brand voice is important in marketing your brand.
How do you want your audience to perceive your company?
In other words, what sort of image do you want to create for your brand through the language you use and messages you convey?
Your brand voice should remain consistent and unchanging through all situations.
It is representative of your brand personality and is influenced by your stance on important matters.
Check out our previous blog post for a deeper look into what a brand voice is and how it differs from brand tone (which we’ll talk about in the next section).
We’ve also talked about brand voice guidelines and why it’s so important to develop one for your brand.
Brand Tone
Easily confused with brand voice and sometimes thought to be interchangeable, your brand tone is actually how you choose to express the former.
As we mentioned above, your brand voice is unchanging.
It is representative of your brand’s personality and remains consistent regardless of situation.
Your brand tone, however, can convey mood and emotions and is adjusted to fit any specific scenario.
The language and words you use will change depending on context, the medium, or the audience you’re speaking to.
Brand tone can be found in your interactions and communications with your customers among other places.
Having guidelines for your brand tone will help you determine how to tailor your tone to fit any given situation.
Brand Attitude
Your brand attitude is how your audience perceives your thoughts and involvement in certain situations as well as what they think of your brand.
Developing your brand attitude is just one of the many marketing strategies used to help shape your customers' opinions of your brand.
Communicating and exhibiting your brand attitude is often done through your brand voice and tone when creating content or interacting with your audience.
Developing guidelines for your brand attitude will help ensure consistency across your brand and that you are portraying a unified attitude and message through all channels of communication.
Brand Story
It’s important to develop a brand story that will resonate with your audience.
Having a brand story can help your customers not only understand the basics of your brand and what you do, but also connect with you at a deeper level.
Brand stories should make your brand more relatable, utilising human emotions and common or shared human experiences to elicit a response or reaction from your audience.
We’re excellent storytellers at The Branded Agency and would love to work with you to develop an unforgettable brand story.
Reach out to us today so that we can learn more about your brand and begin telling your story to the world.
Brand Key Messages
Outlining and understanding your key messages are an important part of your non-visual brand guidelines.
Brand messages are the main, most important messages that you wish to convey and share with your audience.
Typically, key messages are based around your brand’s core values as well as your mission, vision, and purpose statements.
They are the messages that you want your audience to understand without any confusion about your brand.
You want your audience to remember your branding messages long after they’ve left your page and ended their interaction with you.
Oftentimes your key messages will include not only what you do and how you do it, but why you do what you do.
You may also discuss what makes your brand unique and better than your competitors.
Communication Principles
Another important aspect of your non-visual brand guidelines or your communication strategy guide are your communication principles.
Your communication, whether through website content, social media posts, or customer interactions, all affect how the public perceives your brand.
Developing and defining your communication principles will help to set a standard for any communication you put out.
Communication principles are not necessarily always unique to each brand, though they may include some principles that are more important to your brand than they may be to others.
Typically communication principles will include rules on how to deliver your message in the most effective way possible.
While there are different versions of this list, many consider the seven C’s of communication to be the following: clarity, correctness, conciseness, courtesy, concreteness, consideration, and completeness.
As you can see, these are all communication principles that are important regardless of your brand or business.
At The Branded Agency, we include and define many of these communication principles and even include some that are tailored specifically to suit your business.
Let us know if you need help developing or understanding communication principles for your brand!
How Much Does a Brand Style Guide Cost?
The cost of creating a style guide is $1,000 - $5,000 it will vary depending on the size and complexity of your brand.
It could range from a few hundred dollars for a simple style guide to several thousand for a comprehensive style guide with more detailed rules and guidelines.
Brand Style Guidelines Examples
A style guide should be tailored to fit the needs of your brand, but here some examples of style guides from various brands that you can use as inspiration for your own style guide:
Are Brand Style Guidelines the same as a Brand Bible?
Brand style guidelines and brand bibles are two different documents.
A style guide outlines the rules and standards for how your brand should be presented across different platforms, while a brand bible is more focused on the core values and mission of your brand.
Creating a style guide is an important step in crafting a strong visual identity for your brand that looks cohesive and uniform across all your brand assets.
With style guidelines you can set the rules on how to use logo, colour palette, typography style, design elements and imagery style so that all your branding efforts are consistent.
You should also consider including brand messaging style guide and copywriting style rules in your style guide too.
Different Styles of Guidelines
Brand Communication Guidelines
Simple Brand Style Guidelines
Comprehensive Brand Identity and Guidelines
Logo Guidelines
Social Media Guidelines
Photography Guidelines
Writing Guidelines
Color Guidelines
Rendering Guidelines
Video Guidelines
Animation Guidelines
Iconography Guidelines
Amazon Store Design Guidelines
Shopify Store Design Guidelines
Website Design Guidelines
Packaging Guidelines
Stationery Guidelines
Print Guidelines
Typography Guidelines
Are Brand Guidelines the same as your Brand Identity?
No.
Your brand style guidelines outline how your brand should be presented across different platforms, while your brand identity is a combination of visual and non-visual elements that make up the core of your brand.
It includes things like logo style, colour palette, typography style, design elements and imagery style.
Think of style guidelines as a set of rules that dictate how your brand identity and style should be used.
Style guidelines are an important part of any branding project as they allow you to create a consistent visual style for your brand across all platforms and materials.
While there are different types of style guidelines available, the key is to tailor it to fit the needs of your brand.
Doing so will help create a strong visual style that looks cohesive and uniform across all your brand assets.
Closing Thoughts
As you can see, having brand guidelines, both visual and non-visual, are an absolute asset to your brand, dare we say, crucial to the success of your brand.
Thoroughly developing and outlining brand guidelines for your business helps to create consistency, leading to a strong and unified brand on all fronts, across all channels of communication.
Looking for more?
Luckily for you, this isn’t the first time we’ve discussed brand guidelines.
Check out our previous blog post where we include examples of some of our own stellar work developing brand guidelines for our clients.
If you have any questions at all or are ready to start building out your brand guidelines and a communication strategy guide for your business, send us a message or give us a call.
We’re more than happy to discuss your needs and are excited to learn about you and your goals so that we can grow your brand to where you want it to be.
The team at The Branded Agency is looking forward to chatting with you!
Here are some very specific step by step branding guides for: Real Estate, Lawyers, Accounting, Doctors, Dentists, Optometrists, Jewellery, Makeup & Beauty, Skincare, Pet Food, Fashion and Construction.
Checkout our Other Blogs
Checkout our Other Blog Posts
Other Resources
Branding in a Box for Small Businesses
Digital Marketing Report for 2023
The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Brand Identity
A Guide to Creating a Buyer Persona
A Beginners Guide to Writing a Business Plan