Why your brand needs a style guide
What a brand style guide holds and how it keeps your identity from drifting with every new piece, from the website to social media.
A well-considered visual identity can come undone in six months. Not out of bad intent: each new piece is made in a hurry, by someone else or with another tool, and little by little the brand stops looking like itself. A style guide exists to prevent that.
What it holds
- Palette. The official colors, their exact values and when each is used.
- Typography. The chosen families, the hierarchy and the reading measures.
- Symbol and variants. The versions of the symbol, its clear space and the uses that are not allowed.
- Imagery. The kind of photography and composition that belongs to the brand, and the kind that does not.
- Voice. How the brand speaks, which words it prefers and which it avoids.
What it does in practice
A guide saves you decisions. Whoever designs your next piece, your team, or a collaborator working with you for the first time finds the answers in one place. The brand stays recognizable without you supervising every detail.
It also protects perceived quality. The brands that feel elevated are usually the ones that keep the same intention at every touchpoint, even the smallest.
It grows from strategy
A style guide works when the decisions inside it have a reason. That is why, in Brandifesting™, it comes after the archetype reading and the brand strategy. Every color and every typeface answers to what the brand is, and the guide simply puts it in writing.
In The Brand Emblem, Decreta’s creative direction delivers a palette, typography and a brand style guide on the strategic foundation of the method. You can see the detail on The Brand Emblem, or talk it through on the diagnostic call.