Brand Style Guide Tyler TX

Every great brand has a brand book or style guide. It’s one of the many reasons they’re impressionistic and rememberable. Good branding sticks because it reinforces consistency through repetitive use of the same logo, fonts, colors, imagery, values, and messaging.

Every brand needs some form of visual and verbal standardization to guide its voice and marketing efforts. Brands that blend are often discredited, mistrusted, and ultimately overlooked. Your business can’t afford to be overlooked. Style guides or brand books don’t take much time to develop at all.

Throughout this article, we’ll showcase 33 great examples of brand style guides, also called guidelines, brand books, or brand manuals. Here’s what you can expect:

  1. What is a Style Guide or Brand Book?
  2. Why are Brand Guidelines Important?
  3. What Makes a Good Brand Book?
  4. 33 Examples of Effective Brand Style Guides
  5. Creating a Brand Book for your Business

What is a Style Guide or Brand Book?

A style guide, also known as brand book or brand guide, is essentially a set of rules and standards that explain how your brand works. These brand guides influence marketing campaigns, messaging, communication, and advertising. They are strategic guides covering all aspects of your brand.

These guides explain a brand’s identity and presents standards for the brand to both internal and external parties. Some brand books are focused exclusively on the design aspect, while others include mission statements and messaging guidelines as well.

If you’re considering a style guide or brand book for your business, it’s important to assess your needs for such a manual and determine which brand guidelines should be included.

Why are Brand Guidelines Important?

Though the content of a brand book or style guide varies, they are important to maintain brand consistency, establish credibility, improve brand recognition, and increase profit. You may be asking yourself, ‘what does a brand book have to do with generating profit?’ Here, I’ll explain.

Maintains Consistent Visual Identity

Let’s say you’ve hired an outside designer to design something for your business. How will that designer know they’ve created an end product that matches the look and feel of your brand? This is the realm of brand books and style guides. These brand guides help your business maintain consistent visual identity and brand cohesion, no matter the scenario.

Improve Brand Recognition

Brand recognition, or brand awareness, refers to the extent to which a consumer can correctly recall or identify a particular brand based on a single product, logo, tag line, packaging or advertising campaign.

Tell me which company you think of when I say Pumpkin Spice Latte, that’s good brand recognition, and a brand guide will help your business do that.

Establishes Credibility

A good brand book maintains brand consistency and ultimately establishes credibility in the minds of consumers and potential customers, which then leads to customer conversion, retention, and loyalty.

Businesses suffer when their brand is inconsistent in its marketing, advertising, and messaging. It leaves potential customers feeling confusing and doubtful, which finally results in distrust towards your brand and a lack of credibility.

Increase Profit

Consumers purchase from brands they trust. In return, brands that add value are rewarded with customer retention and increased profits.

Our clients often say they chose Stoodeo because they really liked our logo and website. Further proof that maintaining consistent visual identity leads to improved brand recognition, which leads to greater trust and credibility in the minds of consumers, resulting in increased profits.

Now, let’s discuss what makes and goes into making a good brand book or style guide.

What Makes a Good Brand Book?

Effective brand books or style guides usually cover some or all of the following topics:

  • Logo usage
  • Tagline or slogan
  • Color palette
  • Fonts and typography
  • Photography and imagery
  • Messaging and tone
  • Mission statement
  • Brand values
  • Elevator pitch
  • Target audience
  • Email signature
  • Social media

Let’s take a quick look and discuss a few of these topics before looking at the visual examples.

Logo Usage

Usage of your logo should be maintained across all platforms. This includes defining acceptable usage, placement, and alterations. Its important to define and establish usage rules for your logo as its the most visual object people have of identifying your brand.

Tagline

A tagline or slogan is more than a catch phrase. This single line of text should tell the world what you do and why it matters to them. Once you’ve found your tagline, you’ll need to define acceptable usage and placement requirements. This could be things like spacing, proximity to your logo, font used, font style (italic, bold, or normal), capitalization, etc.

Color Palette

A well defined color palette provides a brand with a consistent look and feel. Choose primary, secondary, and complementing colors for your brand. Brand books and style guides should then clearly define these colors by name and by print or screen values RGB, CMYK, HEX.

Fonts & Typography

Your brand guide should also include usage definitions and examples for acceptable typefaces and styling, for both print and web. Make the rules for how to use these fonts clear and give guidelines for any additional styling, size, pairing, spacing, and color. Try to only include a few typefaces, usually a primary, secondary, and a complementary font is all you need.

33 Examples of Effective Brand Style Guides

Now that we’ve discussed the nature of brand books and style guides, lets look at 33 great examples of brand style guides, also called brand guidelines, brand books, or brand manuals:

1 Apple

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Apple

Apple marketing resources and identity guidelines

Apple has developed and published brand and marketing guidelines for its app store developers to use when advertising their app store apps and for the usage of Apple’s logo alongside their products.

View Apple’s marketing guidelines

2 Starbucks

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Starbucks

Starbucks dress code lookbook

Starbucks is a great example of a business that developed brand strategy and guidelines for key areas of their business, including logo usage for third parties serving their coffee, and right down to their employee’s choice of clothing for the workplace.

View Starbucks’ employee dress code lookbook
View Starbucks’ logo usage guidelines

3 Skype

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Skype

Skype’s brand guide

A few years back Skype created a whimsical and slightly comical brand guide. In it, they decided to cover their mission, target audience, users, logo usage, typefaces, and colors – check it out.

View Skype’s brand guide

4 Trello

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Trello

Trello’s design system, Nachos

Sometimes brand guidelines need to extend beyond logo usage into a style guide for a digital product. In Trello’s case, they’ve created an extensive online design system for their brand’s product and have even given it a name, Nachos.

View Trello’s design system called Nachos

5 Foursquare

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Foursquare

Foursquare’s brand book

Foursquare is another good example of a business brand book that includes correct and incorrect logo usage examples, icon usage, color palette, copywriting, tone and voice, typography, and trademarks.

View Foursquare’s brand book

6 Boy Scouts of America

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX BSA

Boy Scouts of America’s brand identity guide

BSA has done an amazing job detailing aspects of their brand in their identity guide. Across thirty pages BSA defines acceptable usage and examples for their purpose, theme, mission, trademark, programs, signage, typography, patches, uniforms, logo, colors, marketing material, and more.

View Boy Scouts brand identity guide

7 American Red Cross

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Red Cross

American Red Cross brand identity

The Red Cross has created an effective single page guide that communicates the brand’s identity at a glance. In this single page, they’ve defined acceptable usage for their logo, color palette, typography, and tone of voice.

View the Red Cross’ brand identify guide

8 MailChimp

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX MailChimp

MailChimp’s content & asset style guides

MailChimp has a good example of simple brand asset guidelines for using their logo. Every company should have this as a minimum set of guidelines for their brand. They also have a well documented internal content style guide for their employees.

View MailChimp’s content style guide
View MailChimp’s brand assets guide

9 Uber

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Uber

Uber’s 2018 rebrand guide book

When Uber rebranded in 2018 they created an impressive section on their website to showcase the brand changes. These changes include an updated design system, logo, typography, iconography, color palette, motion, imagery, and tone of voice.

View Uber’s 2018 rebrand guide book

10 Facebook

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Facebook

Facebook’s brand resource center

Facebook creates an entire resource center dedicated to outlining rules for using Facebook brand assets and showcasing it’s content.

View Facebook’s brand resource center

11 Twitter

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Twitter

Twitter’s brand resources

Twitter offers brand guidelines for its logo, trademark, social icons, and other aspects of their brand via a download in their brand resource page on their website.

View Twitter’s brand resources

12 YouTube

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX YouTube

YouTube’s brand resources

YouTube offers a simple solution for the building blocks of its brand. On their brand resources page, they include guidelines for logo usage, icons, and colors.

View YouTube’s brand resources

13 Pinterest

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Pinterest

Pinterest’s brand guidelines

This simply shows how to use the Pinterest brand in marketing materials. While not comprehensive, it’s another simple guide that provides general rules about using Pinterest’s brand assets or showcasing Pinterest content.

View Pinterest’s brand guidelines

14 Evernote

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Evernote

Evernote’s brand guidelines

Evernote has created an effective design system for its brand. Part of that system includes brand identity guidelines, including logo usage, color palette, and typography.

View Evernote’s brand guidelines

15 UC Berkeley

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Berkeley

Berkeley’s brand guidelines

UC Berkeley is an excellent example of a comprehensive brand book and style guide. In it, they clarify their brand and its position, ensure key themes are present in all communications and encourage internal and external advocates to properly represent their brand.

View UC Berkeley’s brand guidelines

16 British Airways

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX BA

British Airways brand guidelines

British Airways offers a glimpse at what an exhaustive brand guide book should look like. Though this is an older 2007 version, I’m sure you’ll agree about the value this adds and brings to their brand positioning.

View British Airways brand guidelines

17 Oregon State University

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX OSU

Oregon State University’s brand guidelines

OSU is another great collegiate example of a dedicated comprehensive brand guide, including brand positioning, tone of voice, visual identity, brand usage, messaging, audience, editorial style, color palette, typography, and more.

View OSU’s brand guidelines

18 GOV.UK

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Gov.uk

GOV.UK identity guideline

GOV.UK is a leading governmental agency in the UK and has always been at the forefront of great user-centered design principals and philosophy. They have some of the best-documented guidelines and handbooks around. I’ve included three effective examples of their principals and guidelines.

View GOV.UK identity guideline
View GOV.UK design system
View GOV.UK design principles

19 Google

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Google

Google’s visual asset guidelines

Google shapes its brand in many ways; one of which is through maintaining visual coherence of its products and visual assets. Here’s one example of how they do this in their visual assets guidelines.

View Google’s visual assets guidelines

20 Dropbox

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Dropbox

Dropbox’s brand guide

The Dropbox logo is a visual imprint that’s widely recognized. Because they want it to be instantly recognizable, consistency is important. So they’ve provided brand guidelines for its usage.

View Dropbox’s brand guide

21 Columbia University

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Columbia

Columbia University’s visual identity guide

In 2011 Columbia University produced and published blue290, a practical guide to Columbia’s standards of visual identity. In it, they cover the proper use of their logo, trademark, typography, letterhead, and web identity.

View Columbia’s visual identity guide

22 NASA

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX NASA

NASA’s 1976 retro style guide

This is probably the most interesting example in our list, its NASA’s 1976 graphics standards manual. This now retro manual includes 60 pages of insights into their standards for logo, reproduction art, stationery, typography, forms, publications, signage, vehicles, and more.

View NASA’s 1976 graphics standards manual

23 Acano

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Acano

Acano’s brand guidelines

In 2016 Acano’s brand team developed a new brand book to better reflect the essence of who they are and where they felt they were going as a company. In this book, you’ll find brand guidelines that include logo usage, spacing, wordmark, tagline, color palette, typography, imagery, iconography, illustration, and more.

View Acano’s brand guidelines

24 University of Saskatchewan

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX BA

University of Saskatchewan’s brand expression guide

Next up for great collegiate examples is the University of Saskatchewan. They’ve assembled a 40-page expression guide for those responsible in creating marketing and communication material within their organization. In it, they cover brand and verbal identity, brand position, audiences, messaging, tone of voice, tagline, and more.

View the University of Saskatchewan’s brand expression guide

25 Co-op Design System

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Co-op

Co-op’s system of design principals and guides

Co-op has created an effective design system made up of principles, guidelines, and tools that help design and build user-centered services. Their design system includes design principals, user research principals, content principals, pattern library, brand assets, content style guide, and more.

View Co-op’s design system of principals and guides

26 HubSpot

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX HubSpot

HubSpot’s written style guide

HubSpot felt the need to create a house style to give an introduction to written style guides for internet marketers. This highly useful guide will help you create and implement your next style guide.

View HubSpot’s written style guide

27 Formstack

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Formstack

Formstack’s brand manual

Formstack is a really great example of guidelines and blueprints that help create beautiful and thoughtful experiences across their brand and products. Be sure to check out their design system, brand guidelines, and content guidelines.

View Formstack’s brand manual

28 Atlassian

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Atlassian

Atlassian’s brand resource center

Atlassian has created an end-t0-end design framework that results in straightforward and beautiful experiences across their brand, products, tone of voice, and marketing.

View Atlassian’s brand resource center

29 The Ritz-Carlton

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Ritz

Ritz-Carlton’s Gold Standard

In this example, the Ritz-Carlton outlines the meaning and implications that encompass the philosophy behind their Gold Standard. They cover credo, motto, service commitment, service values, position, and employee promise.

View Ritz-Carlton’s Gold Standard

30 Medium

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Medium

Medium’s brand guidelines

Medium offers its branding guidelines which minimally include wordmark, monogram, spacing, positioning, color usage, and do’s and don’ts. It’s a simple and effective straightforward document reflecting proper usage of their logo for third-parties.

View Medium’s brand guidelines

31 University of Denver

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Denver

University of Denver’s brand guide

The University of Denver’s division of marketing and communication has a dedicated section within its website defining guidelines for its brand, including logo, voice and tone, style guide, iconography, and more.

View the University of Denver’s brand guide

32 Charity Water

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Charity Water

Charity Water’s brand book

In 2016 well known non-profit Charity Water assembled this 80+ page brand book and its quite amazing. In it they cover their brand, logo, color palette, typography, imagery, tone of voice, social media, video, editorial, and more.

View Charity Water’s brand book

33 Radiate

Brand Guideline Style Guide Tyler TX Radiate

Radiate’s style guide

Our last example comes from Radiate. In 2017 Radiate created a style guide for its brand messaging and brand identity. This document covers its mission, story, voice, tone, tagline, logo, spacing, color palette, typography, and more.

View Radiate’s style guide

Creating a Brand Book for your Business

Creating a simple brand book or set of guidelines takes some initial time and planning, but the rewards it brings to a brand are well worth the investment.

At Stoodeo, we can help your brand develop an award-winning visual identity, and work with you to hone in your messaging and tone. Contact us today and let’s discuss creating something special for your brand, or give us a call at (903) 871-5170.

Article Topics

  • Brand Book
  • Brand Colors
  • Brand Culture
  • Brand Guide
  • Brand Guidelines
  • Brand Identity
  • Brand Manual
  • Brand Messaging
  • Brand Positioning
  • Brand Strategy
  • Brand Style Guide
  • Brand Toolkit
  • Brand Typography
  • Brand Values
  • Business Branding
  • Business Identity
  • Look Book
  • Style Guide
  • Visual Identity