{"id":3505,"date":"2022-06-13T12:50:05","date_gmt":"2022-06-13T19:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.morganchaney.com\/?p=3505"},"modified":"2025-05-21T08:17:14","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T15:17:14","slug":"why-you-should-create-a-brand-guide-for-your-company-and-a-peek-at-ours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.morganchaney.com\/blog\/why-you-should-create-a-brand-guide-for-your-company-and-a-peek-at-ours\/","title":{"rendered":"Why You Should Create a Brand Guide for Your Company (And A Peek At Ours)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I know: you\u2019ve probably got more pressing things on your plate to finish than an extra document that\u2019s mostly for internal use and doesn\u2019t directly sell any of your products or services. It\u2019s true; brand and style guides can often feel like busywork with little obvious return on investment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But hear me out \u2013 do all of your social media posts look like part of a set<\/a>? Do your employees know how to communicate in tones of voice that uphold your brand\u2019s identity and pathos? Do your product designs match the look of your website, your email signature, that invoice you sent out this morning, and the banner on your Twitter account? Could a new employee step in a quickly understand what kinds of visuals and verbiage best represent your company? You might think that creating coherent branding isn\u2019t that <\/em>important, but in a digital age ruled by both visual stimuli and market oversaturation, standing out consistently takes a considerable amount of effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Style guides are crucial for your brand<\/a>
  2. What\u2019s in a brand style guide?<\/a>
  3. Putting it all together<\/a>
  4. View our brand guide<\/a>
  5. Bonus: Publishing your style guide online can earn you backlinks and business<\/a>
  6. Bonus bonus: some style guides we love<\/a><\/ol>\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\n\n\n
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    Style guides are crucial for your brand<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Your brand style guide communicates your company\u2019s design standards to both your current team, and any new employees, writers, or designers you may work with in the future. It\u2019s a great document to include in employee onboarding because it quickly communicates the ethos<\/a> of your brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Style guides can support marketing campaigns by ensuring that messaging stays relevant and related to your company\u2019s mission. Good brand guides also distinguish your brand from those of your competitors, and even help to create a stronger narrative for why a potential customer should trust your product or service.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Branding is kind of our bread and butter at Morgan Chaney, and we use a style guide we updated recently to inform our choices on things like graphics, logo usage, and tone of voice in social media, ads, and videos. It helps our designers and writers (hi!) happy because it gives us a good foundation for new projects by laying out expected standards of design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    You can scroll down to the bottom of this article if you\u2019d just like to peek at how we <\/em>organize our style guide, but I\u2019d encourage you to read on to see some other great examples of what great brands do to keep their style coherent, cohesive, and constant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    What\u2019s in a brand style guide?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    Brand style guides are essentially documents that lay out for employees and designers how different elements of a business should be used. We\u2019ve included examples from our own style guide below to give you an idea of what yours might include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Proper logo usage<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Your logo is usually part of a lead\u2019s first touchpoint for your brand, so it\u2019s important to use it properly. Be sure to include it along with proper usages for both web and print (if applicable.) Instructions about minimum and maximum sizes and size in relation to other elements is key to help maintain a brand\u2019s integrity. Additionally, including examples of how the logo shouldn\u2019t <\/em>be used can help designers understand how to properly display it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    What colors the brand often uses<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Brand color alone can increase brand recognition by up to 80 percent, according to a study<\/a> from the University of Loyola, Maryland. Brand colors are used to create a sense of cohesiveness between different elements of the brand \u2013 from social media to physical products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Tone, voice, and verbiage guidelines<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    When our team speaks about Morgan Chaney, we use a tone laid out in our style guide. Very simply, we aim to be authentic, helpful, friendly, and witty in all our communications. With that comes a set of expectations for our voice that include more specific metrics like average reading level for written communication, do\u2019s and don\u2019ts for specific situations, and more. Creating a cohesive tone of voice<\/a> can help customers feel like your team stands uniformly behind your brand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Typography \u2013 how fonts are used for the brand<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Typefaces used in your logo, marketing, website, and any other front-facing area should be included in the style guide, along with their weights (how thin or bold they are), common sizes, and web-safe alternatives<\/a> (very commonly needed for email marketing). Some brands, like ours, also include elements like paragraph spacing and examples of what different kinds of quotes might look like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    If you\u2019re just starting to design your brand, it can help to know which fonts translate well<\/a> between print and web. While most website builders like WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace will allow you to load in whatever font you want, load times and how it displays on your user\u2019s screen may be worse for non-standard fonts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Standards for audio and video projects<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Less commonly you\u2019ll see brand guides that incorporate how elements of a brand should sound or watch. Companies who routinely publish video ads, podcasts (or podcast advertising), how-tos, or vlogs can extend their style guides to audio and video to help keep those elements cohesive with their brands, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In their excellent and very comprehensive style guide, Zendesk<\/a>, a sales CRM, discusses the philosophy behind their videos alongside how they shoot, edit, animate, and score any film-based elements they may use. They incorporate specific ways of performing each part of their production process \u2013 for example, they\u2019re no fans of shaky, sped-up, hyperlapsed, or cross-dissolved footage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Web styles \u2013 how elements on your website and blog look<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Some brand guides incorporate examples of how elements on a company\u2019s website are supposed to look. Medium<\/a>, for example, has directions for how text should be lined up on the web and on their mobile app, and also has designs for buttons and their corresponding meanings. Alienware<\/a> takes it one step further and also discusses the types of lineart that can be displayed on their website and social media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In general, including some of the following in your brand guide may make your website adhere better to your overall style:<\/p>\n\n\n\n