This guide is about how to create a brand book for your small business in 2021, however let’s discuss first what’s a brand book! Brand book (brand guideline or style guide) is a set of rules that explain how your brand works, which are your main brand elements and what is the main goal of your brand. Brand books influence every marketing campaign, communication and products/services. They are like strategic guidelines, as it covers all the aspects of your brand. Overall, brand book serves the following purposes for your business:
If you have a small company, you may think that a brand book is not so important to have, but every brand out there should have this style guide to make sure that all of their visual elements are consistent with each other. Suppose that you are the only designer in your company. You design all of the visual elements, like logo, website, business cards and other materials. Of course, you know all the elements and “rules” by heart. Now, suppose that after several years, you hire a second designer to handle some of your workload. In this case, you get the responsibility to teach this person all of the guidelines for the brand from your memory. However, it would be surely much easier if you could just give him the brand book, that contains everything he/she should know: colors, logo sizes and placement, fonts, etc. Another example is when you are a freelancer, who works with different clients. In this case, a brand book is a great way to return to work you have done several months ago, without the need to comb through your old files just for figuring out which color or font you used for that project. Instead, you can just open the brand book and see all the things you need to know in just a few seconds. A Brand book will help every single company by making their work more easier and consistent. Creating a brand book when you are working on a project is not something that consumes time, yet it can save you hours of work down the road.
The length of brand books can vary a lot: from a single page to dozens of pages depending on the complexity of your company and the number of visual elements, marketing materials that are produced. For example, a simple website with single logo design, defined typography, colors and no offline materials can have a brand book which is just one page. However, a large company with many divisions and different marketing/advertising mediums is likely to have a really long brand book, which will clarify all of their usage guidelines. Overall, your brand book should be no longer than necessary, but long enough to effectively communicate all the important information about your brand’s visual style.
While elements typical of brand books vary from industry to industry and from small to large companies, these are the main ones that you should include in your brand book.
To create a brand book that will be useful and attractive both for your team and for your customers is a huge challenge. However, there are some useful tips and if you stick to them, you can create a really powerful brand book. Here are some of the most effective tips:
Before creating a brand book, you should clearly identify who are going to receive, read and use these guidelines. It’s really important to know your target audience, so you can tailor your content accordingly. For example, if you are going to distribute it outside of your team, make sure to not use any jargon or technical knowledge that would be difficult for others to understand. Write with friendly language that will attract and engage the audience.
If you want your guidelines to be embraced by all, then all you need to do is keeping it simple. You should make sure that what you is explained and included in your brand book can be easily understood by different groups of people: your employees, your partners, customers and even competitors. Of course, now it will take from you extra time to simplify the use of your brand book, but it will surely save a lot more time in the future.
Brand books are like expression of brand’s creativity. There are no rules about creating brand books so you can use your creativity and, as a result, increase your brand’s awareness. For example, there is no rule that it should be in PDF format, so you can have the whole thing online. Try to use creative elements in your brand book, but make sure to not overcomplicate it. Remember to keep it simple.
Your brand book should be truly the representative of your company, its culture and style of working. For example, if you are a fitness company with young, energetic and healthy positioning, then make sure that your brand book is not stuffy, dictatorial and boring. If you create a brand book for cartoon show, make it as fun, colorful and positive as that series. Or , if it’s for an asset management company, make it as clean and straightforward as possible.
Don’t leave room for misunderstandings in your brand book. Try to give helpful, practical and specific knowledge to the people reading your guide. For instance, if you include particular type of overlapping text or any kind of Photoshop treatment, then make sure to add page in your brand book which will explain exactly how it works.
If you have created a new brand book and you made changes to your logo, fonts used, color palettes, etc., then you need to track back wherever the previous version has been used so that you can replace all the materials with updated version. For example, if you have a new logo, then you should change it in all websites, social networks, email footers, presentations, documents and so on.
To make sure that people won’t use old or wrong versions of your visual elements, make sure to open access to a library of correct files. Set up a download section on your website where all logos, current guidelines, images and other materials are stored. If you want, you can create a password to protect it, but believe us, it’s much easier to update one set of logos online compared to replying thousands of emails requesting these materials.
If you want your team to embrace your new brand, then they need to feel like it is theirs. They need to feel a part of it and clearly understand every single element in your brand book. For this purpose, create a project team consisting of employees from all levels in your company and ask regular feedback from them during brand guideline development. Find out whether they understand the document, what are the necessary improvement according to them, what you can do to make easier for them to use the brand book. Involving employees from all over your company can throw up some great issues that would never have been considered in the marketing department alone.
At the end of your brand book, make sure to include some relevant contacts and email addresses of your staff. It’s necessary, because sometimes readers have some questions about the guide which they cannot figure out alone. By attaching some email addresses, you will fix this problem by having a team that would answer to all of the questions and concerns. In addition, also consider creating a FAQ part of the brand book and think about the top 20-30 questions people might ask when they first approach your brand.
The main goal of brand books is to explain, advise and guide people to use and reproduce your brand. However, this does not necessarily mean that your brand is set in stone forever. Naturally, your brand will evolve and change over time, and your brand book should be revised and updated accordingly. When you update your brand book, make sure to include version number not only on the front page, but on every page. We could go on introducing hundreds of tips for creating effective brand books, but the ones mentioned above are the most important ones, which you should keep in your mind for creating an awesome brand guideline.
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You could have a great brand book with multiple sections, great design and useful information in it, but it won’t be effective until people know that it exists. Before asking your employees to share and promote it, you need to first of all make sure that they understand it themselves. For this purpose, make sure that all employees have access to your brand book, especially designers and employees in marketing and communication departments. So, once brand and visual identities are established, spread the word to all of your employees through written communication and face-to-face meetings. Try to not only explain what the brand position is, but also why and how customers are going to benefit from it. Now, when your employees know every single detail about your brand book, encourage them to become brand ambassadors. To motivate them, consider rewarding them for showing acts of being ‘on brand’ with recognition programmes that reward positive performance connected with the brand. Managing the brand is not a static process, it’s active, ongoing, always evolving process, so make sure that your employees are aware of this and are ready to spread the word about your brand.
There are many awesome brand books out there on the Web, and each of them have their own positioning, style and purpose. To conclude our eBook, here we present the most appealing and creative brand books we have come across.