- What is A Brand Book, and Why Do You Need One?
- Elements of a good brand book
- Publishing Your Brand Book:
- Next Steps:
- FAQ: Essential Steps to Successfully Publish Your Brand Book
Did you decide to establish a business of your own? Great. But how do people get to know your values and brand? This is a question you should ask before stepping into the market.
Building a strong and consistent brand identity is more important than ever in today’s competitive market. Branding is an effective way to establish your presence or reinforce your brand.
A brand book, or brand style guide, is an essential tool for ensuring that everyone involved in representing the brand—internally or externally—stays on the same page.
Let’s explore how a good style guide can help you with your branding, especially how you can publish it for free. aa
What is A Brand Book, and Why Do You Need One?
A brand book is a document that defines rules and guidelines for creating and maintaining the brand identity through visual or non-visual elements. It acts as a brand bible and ensures that internal teams and external partners understand and adhere to the brand standards.
This makes a reference tool for brand guidelines that outline:
- Brand Mission and Values: The core principles that define your brand’s purpose.
- Visual Identity: Logos, color palettes, typography, and imagery guidelines.
- Voice and Tone: The style and manner of communication.
- Usage Guidelines: Rules of applying brand elements across various media.
A well-created style guide fosters the trust of other businesses and customers towards you and represents a sense of professionalism.
Elements of a good brand book
Before you start creating your brand book, here are a few elements that would be good to incorporate:
Defining a solid purpose
Defining the end goals and the ‘why’ for the brand book is essential. This will help create a style guide that serves to achieve growth.
Explore what your brand has unique from others, create an identity for your brand. Here’s a guide that can help you understand everything about brand identity.
Gathering brand elements
Start by collecting the necessary elements that define your brand:
Logo
Include variations that can be used, correct or incorrect usage, cropping, and spacing guidelines. Make sure you have an option for all sizes of documents and publications, from a business card to the website logo.
Netflix, one of the world’s leading streaming service companies, has a detailed guide dedicated to their logo. You can find the acceptable variations of the logo as well as guidelines on how to avoid misusing it. For more insights into logos and their impact on brand image, visit Netflix’s branding website here.
Color Palette
Define the colors that speak about your brand. Remember, the right colors and combination will help create an overall attractive design.
Consider Starbucks, whose subtle green color palette has always been noteworthy. They also have special palettes for occasions and events, using colors to express their brand across various platforms.
Typography
Specify the fonts for various applications, such as headings, body text, and captions. Define which fonts will be acceptable, and do not forget to mention the guidelines for different text elements.
TikTok has introduced a default Sans to be used for any branding related to the company and also provides a detailed guide about text styling and formatting when voicing TikTok.
Duolingo offers an in-depth guideline on text formatting used to represent their brand, complete with multiple examples of styled fonts according to their voice here.
Imagery and Iconography
The imagery associated with your brand, including photography, illustrations, and iconography, helps in conveying your brand’s personality and values. Include the rules for the style of photography that aligns with your brand, including any set tones, filters, or editing style.
Provide guidelines for the style of illustrations and icons, including, but not limited to, size, color, thickness, placement, and correct and incorrect usage.
Netflix exemplifies each instance that should be avoided making it easier for the team and partners to understand usage of their symbol better.
Voice and Tone
Make your brand’s communication style very clear. Also, define the variance of acceptable tone according to the context. For example, the tone for social media and a media brochure might be different.
Amazon Payments Services defines their communication style and tone variations clearly, setting a standard for how to approach this aspect.
Apt Market Research
Conducting thorough market research and competitor analysis is essential for creating a brand book. This ensures your brand identity is well-defined, consistent, and capable of standing out and resonating with your target audience.
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Understand your audience
Know who your target audience is, their preferences, needs, and behaviors. This will help tailor your brand’s messaging and visuals. You may also gather insights from your current or potential customer about their expectations of your brand.
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Analyze your Competitor
Examine the brands that offer similar products or services. Analyze their brand books to understand their visual identity, messaging and positioning. Pay attention to how their visual elements convey their brand’s personality and note whatmakes their visuals appealing or distinctive.
Study their tone and voice. How do they speak to their audience? What themes do they emphasize on and how do they align with their brand’s identity?
Identify unique opportunities they may not be addressing and capture that space for your brand.
Additionally, consider brands outside your competition that appeal to your target audience to stay updated with market trends and advancements.
Structure the brand book
Organize your brand book into a clear and logical section that is easy to navigate and understand. For an example:
- Introduction
You can include a brief overview of the brand book, its purpose, and how it should be used. You can also add a table of contents, which may help people find the resources they need easily. - Brand Overview
In this section, present an explicit declaration of the brand’s mission and vision, along with the fundamental beliefs that guide your brand’s actions and decisions. Explain the story of your brand and its evolution, and describe the personality that your brand derives. - Visual Identity
The visual identity represents how the world will look at your brand and what elements they will see. Thus, the section will include the guidelines and standards for logos, photography, illustrations, and iconography, along with their style and context. Color Palette and Typographical Formatting are also part of the same; thus, don’t forget to include the color specifications, font choices, sizes, and usage across mediums. -
Communication Guidelines
You can provide a description of the brand’s personality and how it should be portrayed in various contexts, along with details of specific grammar rules, including preferred phrases and vocabulary.
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Application
Showcase practical examples of how the brand should be applied, including but not limited to business cards, websites, social media posts, and packaging. Also, include the dos and don’ts to promote best practices to follow when applying the brand elements.
The above structure just provides an idea of what the content could be, but in reality, there could be more or less sub-sections under each of them. The content entirely depends on the brand, what its audience wants, and how aligned the goals are with market expectations.
Keep your content concise
The content of your brand book should be easy to understand. Avoid jargon and keep instructions clear and concise. Make use of bullet points, headers, and visual examples to make the information easily understandable.
Add examples wherever possible
It is essential to add examples specific to media like print or web to help enhance your overall visibility. Examples are how the logo should look in the newspaper or on the website or the tone of language used for advertising.
Keeping these points in mind, create the brand book, keeping all the guidelines effective here, too. Ensure consistency in layout and aim to create a professional and accessible document. You can use any design tools like Adobe InDesign, Canva, and Microsoft PowerPoint for the creation.
Publishing Your Brand Book:
Now, assuming you have created your brand book and revised it thoroughly, it is time for you to publish it.
You can choose to publish it in print or using an online portal. While a physical copy can be helpful for in-person meetings, an online portal allows easy access to the brand book at any point in the time.
Tiiny Host helps you publish your brand book within a few clicks and for free; let’s see how you can do it and it’s just four simple steps:
You can check some of samples published to see how Tiiny.host supports any kind of file you create.
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Visit the Tiiny.host homepage
Upload your file. You can upload your created PDF, Figma files, or even your website using the given options.
- Just click on “Upload File” or drag & drop.
- Give a link-name
Give a relevant name for the published website - Register, Publish it and share!
That’s it. Your brand book is now published and is ready to be shared.
Note: If you need assistance while publishing, our support executives are always available to help.
You can now embed links to your company website or share them with clients directly through the link. You can also host your company website with Tiiny.host for free; check out this guide to learn how.
Next Steps:
With the growth of your brand, it will become necessary to keep the guidelines updated.
Secure your brand book to avoid unauthorized access. Leanr how you can share your files securiely
Now, you know how to create and publish your brand book. You can customize it according to your preferences, and then it’s simple to publish it through Tiiny.host, and free if the file size is less than 3MB.
You can also use advanced features by upgrading to another plan.
Get your brand book published at Tiiny.host today.
FAQ: Essential Steps to Successfully Publish Your Brand Book
How do I distribute my brand book once it’s published?
You can distribute it in person as printed books or copies during meetings and training sessions. Alternatively, you can email PDFs or upload them to an online portal and share the URL with the employees and other partners.
Can I update my brand book after it’s published?
It is vital to keep your brand book updated as the brand evolves. Regular updates ensure that brand guidelines remain effective.
What tools can I use to design a brand book?
Choose a tool that suits the design skills and needs of your company. There are tools like Adobe, Canva, Microsoft PowerPoint, Figma, and many more that can help you design a good book.
How long should a brand book be?
A style guide has no fixed size. The key is to keep the points concise yet include all the essential aspects needed to clarify the brand.
