Video: Creating Your Brand Guideline Length: 4:04 min

In this module we’ll discuss tips to look for when creating a Brand Guideline for your business that has you prepared to share your brand assets as a media kit, design package to onboard a new designer, or for internal sharing purposes to your sales, marketing, and creative teams, plus to outside partners like signage and graphic design printers.

What To Include In The Style Guide

Video: What to Include in Your Brand Guideline Length: 3:11 min

In the Logo Style Guide include:

• All fonts used for both print and web. Include the name of the font with an example of the alphanumeric and special characters of the font face. Repeat this step for each font used.
• Include details of how the fonts are used for unique application of the logo, such as, an all white or all black logo, as well as what logo version to use on a solid coloured background or image.
• Include the final logo colours used from your colour theory research in colour swatches displaying Pantone, RGB, CMYK and HEX colours.
• You can also include your company mission statement, corporate voice, and brand story.
• Add 5 adjectives from module two, and include any other words to describe the brand to support or expand the corporate voice or tone.

Once you have all the information on the Logo Style Guide canvas, organize it so that it’s easy to read, following design principles discussed in module one. Create multiple pages or simplify the layout to fit one page.

You can create the Brand Guideline using creative software like Illustrator, Photoshop, Canva or use Word and insert the images as needed. If you need to implemented new styles, with amended look and feel to the Brand Guideline as your company grows, amend the guide too. Share the brand guideline PDF in the final logo package as needed. Keep the working Graphic Design files and working Brand Guideline file for your files only.

Module Topics

Here’s what you will learn about creating a Brand Guideline:

• Understand what to include in your final Brand Guideline: font, colour, voice, brand, imagery, logo size, scale, and do’s and don’ts for guide purpose and use.
• What to include in your final brand package to share with media, creative teams, and printers.

Module Topic Learning Objectives

After completing this module and participating in the online discussion, you will be able to:  

• Create a Brand Guideline with all necessary assets to share to internal teams
• Prepare final Brand Guideline package including all necessary assets for distribution
• How to maintain the Brand Guideline as you grow with updates

Resources

Adobe Color Wheel: https://color.adobe.com/create/color-wheel

Adobe Photoshop CC Video Tutorials: https://helpx.adobe.com/ca/photoshop/tutorials.html

Photoshop Free Trial Download: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/free-trial-download.html

Adobe Photoshop User Guide: https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/user-guide.html

Your Brand Needs a Visual Style Guide: https://www.canva.com/learn/your-brand-needs-a-visual-style-guide

Photoshop Free Trial Download: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/free-trial-download.html

Sky Fonts: https://skyfonts.com

How to Create a Brand Guideline: https://99designs.ca/blog/logo-branding/how-to-create-a-brand-style-guide/

Google Fonts: https://fonts.google.com

Anatomy of a letter: http://typedia.com/learn/only/anatomy-of-a-typeface

Colour Gamuts: http://www.printernational.org/images/articles/img-gamut.jpg

Design, CMYK, Paper sizes and more: http://www.printernational.org

How to Install Fonts on a Mac YouTube Tutorial:https://youtu.be/vY0wJzWyxRI

How to Install Fonts on Windows YouTube Tutorial: https://youtu.be/A4OrTlLML1s

Discussion 

For this discussion, share a link to your complete Branding Guideline as a PDF or Google Doc on the discussion board. Leave a comment for two classmates Brand Guideline Discussion post, asking deeper questions about their brand, to share insight on their colour theory, font, and/or identity selections.