Why You Need Brand Style Guide ASAP (+5 Examples of Brand Guides)

3 min readApr 23, 2020

What do all great brands have in common? They are instantly recognizable. Recognizable brands don’t always need to incorporate their name in a logo. Here’s the proof:

However, a great logo isn’t enough to become instantly recognizable. Recognizability is achieved through continuous, consistent branding across all communication channels.

Consistent branding

Consistent branding leaves no room for confusion when it comes to brand communications. It means using the same logo, brand colors, fonts, imagery, and tone of voice, whether it’s a social media post or a PowerPoint presentation.

How to achieve consistency

In order to protect the brand, companies invest in a brand book. A brand book contains the correct logos, fonts, colors as well as the core values of the brand.

Brand consistency requires the entire company to fully understand and implement the brand guidelines in all internal and external communications.

The more detailed the brand book, the less room it leaves for inconsistency. You can go as far as describing the spacing between the lines of a written document.

A brand book should contain at least:

Brand mission and vision
The brand logo
Color palette
Typography

Here’s something that can help you determine other aspects of your brand personality:

How to get everyone on board

Enforcing brand guidelines isn’t easy. Make the brand book easily accessible to everyone. With easy access, people will be less likely to google your logo or use a random text font next time they are making a PowerPoint presentation.

You could also provide templates for presentations, proposals, business cards and other MarCom materials. With templates, people will be working within an approved, on-brand framework.

5 examples of awesome brand books

LinkedIn has a clean and straight-forward web page that divides all components of the brand book into .zip files. You can download these files separately or you can download the complete brand book.

Red Cross

Red Cross keeps it short and sweet. Their brand poster tells you everything you need to know about Red Cross brand in a PDF.

Santa

Although Santa is technically not a brand, *Santa*’s brand book is a clever example of keeping things playful. This brand book is an initiative of the Quietroom.

Coca-Cola

Arguably the most recognizable brand in the world. From industrial design principles for equipment to overall proportions of the bottles, Coca-Cola’s brand book does not leave any room for misinterpretations.