3 Top Reasons Why Investing in a Brand Style Guide Could Save You Thousands of Dollars
If you've been spending what feels like INSANE amounts of money on your brand, you're not alone. Investing in your business is a big deal, and with all the demands these days for graphic design, branding, web design, social media, etc. business owners are expected to invest WAY more on design than ever before.
If you want to invest wisely and get the BEST bang for your buck, a Brand Style Guide might be the way to go!
Everything in your Brand Style Guide (often also referred to as “Brand Book” or “Brand Guidelines”) should be determined when you develop your Brand Strategy & Brand Identity. The elements come together in a Brand Style Guide so they’re easy to access for future use, and so the approved usage is easily understood.
1. It helps your brand stay focused on it’s goals
By having a style guide, you're laying out brand identity decisions that are strategic and specific to your brand and target audience. Being strategic like this means you’ll be more effective in communicating and captivating your audience. No need to try and reinvent the wheel, you’ve already established what works best!
A Brand Style Guide should include:
- your brand logo (all versions of it)
- your brand fonts (& how to use them)
- your brand color palette (with exact color formulas)
- approved brand imagery (or photography style)
- any other brand graphics, patterns etc.
2. It helps cut down on revisions
By having a style guide, you're establishing a unified look & feel for your brand, so creatives can simply adapt it to all those different applications rather than going back to square 1 every time you need a new asset. This naturally cuts down revisions significantly, saving you so much time and money by not needing to go back and forth as much during the creative process!
3. It helps you keep your files in order
Aside from having an overview of your look & feel, specific instructions on what color formulas to use, what fonts to use and how to use them in context. In fact, the best Style Guides have actual clickable links to the files themselves! Time is money, so any time you waste gathering files is a loss for your business. And if you don’t give those files to the designer, you know they’re going to either do it wrong or they’ll have to spend extra time re-creating your assets. Imagine being able to hand over a project brief with a style guide and be done with it (rather than having to dig around for logos, brand graphics and color formulas each time!).
Overall, investing in a Brand Guide is what’s going to help you be more streamlined and effective in the long-run. Saving you money in freelancers, wasted time and process inefficiencies.
PRO TIP: If you want an even MORE robust guide, aim for full "Brand Guidelines" which lays out the strategy, brand voice, personality, messaging etc. in addition to the visual look of the brand.
Could you brand use a Style Guide?