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So what is a Style Guide?

A style guide, typically constructed by a designer and business owner or manager, is a special document that lays out specific, clear guidelines for the presentation of a brand. It promotes consistency by defining rules regarding unique visual and language styles for your complete brand image. Style guides typically include distinct elements such as typefaces, vocabulary, colours, image characteristics, tone, document preferences and more.

Developing Your Brand Style Guide

The creation of your brand style guide is a complex process that should be organised and managed by a design professional. Even if you already have a great logo that you think represents your brand perfectly, there are many other important decisions to be made on everything from font, language and colour to tone, overall message and more.

Selecting Colours

Most businesses use between two and four primary colours across all company representations to promote consistency in the brand image. A professional designer’s experience with colour theory and application is invaluable during this process. Each colour should be carefully selected to create the exact emotional response your brand intends to portray. Once selected, these exact colours should be used across all of your webpages, print designs, letterheads and advertisements. Most designers ensure this exact colour match by noting the 6-digit hex code for every selected colour.

Typography

Although it may be necessary to use more than one font to portray your brand across all mediums, very few companies really need more than three font selections. The typography you choose should be versatile so that it can be easily implemented into logos, webpages, print designs and more. Professional designers may create font styles unique to your brand to help it stand out among the competition.

Tone

When all of your brand’s design elements and other content are combined, they should depict one consistent tone geared towards your intended audience. Whether your brand embodies a fun, energetic spirit with playful and upbeat tones or a more serious and authoritative tone works best, your writers and designers should be on the same page when creating content. Tone inconsistencies can be very damaging to the potential power of your brand.

Although there are hundreds of other considerations to be made while developing a style guide for your brand, understanding the feelings and needs of your target customers is paramount to the entire process. Once you understand your customers and learn how to communicate the key information effectively, your designer can help you build the perfect brand image for reaching those customers. A brand style guide is equally important for businesses with a heavy focus on online presence and for companies who work mostly through print and other mediums. The style guide is the “rulebook” that keeps everyone involved with your company maintain the valuable brand image you have created.

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Logo design is even more important in today’s fast-paced, online world. The need to stand out among the others is bigger than ever. These tips and tricks from professional designers provide some insight into great logo creation, but remember, these points only represent the tip of the iceberg in a very complex process.

Learning the Basics

Before one can even begin creating good logo designs, he must learn all the basics behind this process. Among other qualities, most successful logos are practical, graphic, distinctive, appropriate to the subject matter and simple in form.

Simple designs offer easy recognition and versatility in the logo world. Great logos include a unique or unexpected element without becoming overly complicated. Logos must also be memorable. One of the basic goals of logo design is to help customers and other parties to remember the company.

It is also important to focus on longevity when designing a logo. Once a company has established its brand and logo, the costs of switching to another one are high. For this reason, a good logo designer ensures that his logo will remain effective for many years.

Good logo also work effectively across many different applications and mediums. For example, a good logo design looks great on a billboard and on a mobile-friendly website. Even after meeting all these criteria, a logo cannot reach its full potential if it is not appropriate to its subject matter.

Avoid Clichés

When brainstorming, there are many elements that always come into mine for almost any purpose. For example, a designer trying to create an element to represent an “idea” will almost always think of a light bulb. One trying to portray an “international” symbol may think of a globe symbol.

However, these types of symbols are the first to come to mind for a reason, they are common. For a logo designer, common is not a good thing. A logo cannot stand out among the competition with basic, common elements. Designers must stay away from these visual clichés and use creativity to come up with a different element.

Research and Communication

Although some may believe it, logo design is about much more than creating something “pretty.” Professional logo designers understand that they are playing an important role in the development of an entire brand. They know that in-depth research is essential to success and communicate regularly with their clients throughout the process.

Communication between the designer and the company is especially important during the early stages of the process. It can be easy to misinterpret the direction or message a company needs in their logo, and a logo that doesn’t fulfil its true intended purpose is a complete failure. Clear, open communication in the beginning helps eliminate these problems.

While there are many more professional logo design tips out there, understanding the true importance and complexity of logo design is the true key. It is very rare that a great logo is created without the help of a professional designer, and a business with a sub-par or even average logo is simply missing opportunities for sales and value growth.

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What is Your Goal?

To reach your target market effectively, you need to think about the best possible options for conveying your message. You need to ensure that you do more than simply state your skill sets for your customers. You should be highlighting how you can meet their needs. For example, if you we’re selling print design services, you would want to say something like “our designs can captivate your intended audience.” To determine these goals effectively, you’ll need to know all about what your target market likes and what they need.

Design for Business

Although you now have greater intentions and goals behind your design, you can’t forget about the fundamentals. If the design fundamentals are not present in a design, the final design will be ineffective. Visual hierarchy is the most important of all design fundamentals. The designer’s primary task is to get the audience to look at the most important elements first.

Before creating a design for business marketing, the designer should outline a hierarchy of the most important messages down to the elements of minor importance. The designer can then utilise placement, balance and layout techniques to attract viewers to the important messages first. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to have a great design. Just make sure that your target market is getting the information you intend for them.

Creative Ways to Hit Your Target Market

While identifying you goals and staying committed to design fundamentals will give you a great head start towards a great business design, these ideas can provide extra inspiration when needed:

Targeted Aesthetics
You should build your design based on the preferred aesthetics of your target market. Find out what other brands that your target audience uses to get a feel for these aesthetics. Never copy a design, but instead use these brands for inspirational purposes.

Address Urgency
One widely overlooked aspect of design comes from a designer forgetting to address the urgency associated with the needs of the target audience. For example, if you’re building a website for an emergency care clinic, you don’t want the design to get in the way of the solution. You should try to solve the customer’s problem in as few steps as possible.

While there are many other creative ways to engage your target audience, hitting your target market with design takes unique ideas and strong fundamentals. Without the target market in mind, a designer lacks the proper guidance to complete a truly special design. Do your research and set clear goals. You will have a great target-market-focused design before you know it!

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What is a Brand?

Your brand is what makes your business stand out among the competition. It will usually focus on the trade name of your firm and incorporate a creative logo to help customers remember you. Your brand should focus on increasing the value that customers associate with your products. It should follow a well-devised strategy for reaching this goal.

Brand Building

The beginning of the building process for your brand should depend on the core competencies of your organisation and the market environment in your industry. What advantages do you have over your competition? Do these advantages apply to the customer’s perception of value? For example, if you have a large well-trained sales staff, you may want to focus your brand around your relationship and interaction with your customers.

After deciding on a good branding strategy, you can reinforce your brand image through promotion and advertising. Most business owners focus on clever wording and a clear simple message during marketing campaigns. Customers are also much more likely to be loyal to a brand when their past experiences are positive.

Importance

Building a great brand pays huge dividends in many different ways. Financially, one of the best results of good branding comes from overall business value. Many large companies put the value of their brand on their balance sheet. When acquisitions and mergers occur, the value of a firm’s brand can drive the purchase or partnering price. For example, when Tata Motors bought the Jaguar and Ranger Rover brands from Ford, they didn’t pay 2.56 billion U.S. dollars for factories and raw materials. They paid that huge price for the brand image.

With the growth of the online marketplace and increased competition across almost all industries, consumers are placing more and more value on premium brands. The most effective brands reach the customer through amazing creativity in advertising and by creating brand awareness. When given the choice between a product with a premium brand and a product with an unrecognised brand, almost all consumers will buy the premium brand, even if it is slightly more expensive.

It also important to note that branded products perform better during economic downfalls than unbranded products. Brands can outlive product cycles and help companies fight through recession. During down times, brand owners capitalise on the limited number of opportunities and experience faster re-growth when the economic climate changes.

Whether your business thrives on providing the lowest cost solution or the most reliable product to your customers, building your brand is extremely important. There are many platforms available for building your brand from social media to outstanding customer service. The key is to find out which strategy and platform will be most efficient for your business model, make a plan, and then run with it.

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