How to create your brand guidelines

This brand style guide is what is also known as brand guidelines. Inside this one huge asset, you’re going to find everything you or anybody else is ever going to want to know about your brand.

Your brand guidelines are one huge brand asset that contains everything you’ve done so far for you to use. Think back on the cornerstone documents I mentioned in a previous article, along with the one I wrote about using templates in your brand, and how workflows and client journeys connect with your brand.

Because, at the end of the day, your brand guidelines are all of that and more. First, I want to go back to yet another article I wrote on the importance of style guides for your brand. To summarize that point, there are three types of style guides, content, design, and brand.

Your content style guide focuses on your language, voice, tone, and basic rules (ex. Canadian vs American spelling). Your design style guide focuses on your colours, fonts, logos, and other visual elements (ex. patterns or photo styles). And your brand style guide is a combination of the other two, plus a few extras like your brand's vision, mission, personality, and so on.

This brand style guide is what is also known as brand guidelines.

Inside this one huge asset, you’re going to find everything you or anybody else is ever going to want to know about your brand. That’s the point of it… to collect everything in one place, organize it, and make it easy to use. 

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WHAT TO INCLUDE IN YOUR BRAND GUIDELINES

Here's a quick breakdown of some of the information that you can include as part of your brand guidelines...

• Your entire brand positioning including information about your target audience, different segments, ideal client bios, list of competitors, differentiator, and maybe even your awareness goals and platforms. Think about everything that tells you where and how your brand is visible and to who.

• The meaning behind your brand and what propels it forward. This can be your mission, vision, purpose, and values. Focus on statements that you love and can easily pick out to throw into a marketing campaign when you're short on ideas, but also statements that keep you going forward and striving to be you.

• You into enneagrams? Add in your numbers, add in your clients' numbers, talk about what makes your brand human and how to keep going that way. The earlier mentioned content style guide? That would go in here as well with your spelling, specific word usage, voice style, and different tones.