Style Guide

What is a Style Guide?

Your custom design rulebook, a brand guide, a manual to instil consistent branding across all marketing channels.

Amateur or Pro? Style guides are what set the best brands apart in Melbourne, Australia-wide and globally. The basis for a style guide is to list the all-important custom codes, fonts, typography, tone of voice and colours that your brand marketing must adhere to. Setting up clear parameters is critical to ensure consistency across every single piece of content associated with your brand. The consistency builds trust with your audience and allows them to easily identify you in the big wide world – wherever your brand should pop up.

Styles guides solve the problem of cohesive representation in cross-marketing across web, print, mobile and social platforms. Details of how flexible editors can be with your colours and design elements will make sure no viewers will mistake your visual asset. For brands producing regular written content, tone of voice guidelines prove to be extremely important. The narrative of your brand story should never be lost or confusing. Sharp Instincts understands the value of style guide development and can produce the best branding templates for your business or organisation.

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Tobin Brothers

Tobin Brothers

Tobin Brothers Funerals clear goal was to provide the most transparent source of information about funeral services in the market.

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What are the key questions to consider when building a style guide?

Style Guide

IS THE COST OF A STYLE GUIDE WORTH IT?

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IS THE COST OF A STYLE GUIDE WORTH IT?

The cost of branding should be seen as an investment. A style guide or branding manual drives consistency to build consumer engagement, trust and loyalty and of course, income!

Style Guide

HOW DETAILED SHOULD MY STYLE GUIDE BE?

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HOW DETAILED SHOULD MY STYLE GUIDE BE?

They can be as brief as a one-page document and as comprehensive as a 50+ page manual.Factors such as your industry, employees, marketing reach, budget etc will dictate the complexity.

Style Guide

WHO WILL BENEFIT FROM MY BRAND STYLE GUIDE?

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WHO WILL BENEFIT FROM MY BRAND STYLE GUIDE?

Your marketing team will benefit from clear instructions for all content.

Your consumers will benefit from the accessible recognition of your brand. Your brand will benefit from a sharp identity.

Style Guide

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO CREATE A STYLE GUIDE?

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HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO CREATE A STYLE GUIDE?

Whilst this process shouldn’t be rushed, an efficient brand design company in Melbourne could produce a style guide in a matter of weeks. Client input and response rate will allow quicker turnaround.

Style Guide

CAN STYLE GUIDES BE CHANGED?

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CAN STYLE GUIDES BE CHANGED?

A branding guide’s purpose is consistency.

Once your style guide is decided on, it is best not to sway from its parameters.

For rebranding purposes, an original style guide can be used as inspiration.

Style Guide

IS IT WISE TO MAKE YOUR OWN STYLE GUIDE?

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IS IT WISE TO MAKE YOUR OWN STYLE GUIDE?

Unless you have a dedicated professional marketing team with access to up-to-date software, it will be difficult to achieve a crisp brand manual yourself.

Why use Style Guide

Style guide excellence with sharp instincts

We believe in giving brands the best chance to soar and style guides are key to making this possible. Our brand design and development experts are well versed in building meaningful, easy to follow style guides to inform your business or organisation in Melbourne and Australia-wide. Incorporating high resolution imagery, colour palettes, typography, fonts, logos and more, we present style guide documents that will cover all necessary aspects of your brand. Your input is valuable to informing the overall branding guide, yet we are flexible with your level of involvement throughout the process.

Whether you wish to hand the reigns entirely to our capable team or prefer to be part of each of the various stages, we will meet your needs. Small operations through to large enterprises continue to enjoy our tailored branding approach. Global minded with a boutique level of commitment, this is how we choose to work with our clients. When looking for the best branding solutions, from design to style guides, marketing strategy and beyond, think Sharp Instincts.

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Implementing your style guide in the real world

Having your custom style guide is one thing. Seamlessly implementing its concepts across relevant touchpoints is how you will reap the rewards. At the forefront of your brand image are the brand ambassadors and employees. These are the ones who will need to adhere to your style guide to promote your unique visual assets; think logo, font, typography, images, footage and campaigns. Consistency starts with the intricate internal communications; email signature, portals, signage, print stationery, promo packs, uniforms, contracts, company documents etc. Once your in-house look is spot on, pushing your brand in the real world will rely on the implementation of your well-designed style guide.

With rapid technological advancements, having a style guide or branding manual to turn to helps to efficiently and effectively remain true to your brand design. Outreach will feel streamlined because your guidelines will be clear for any external influencers to understand. Moreso, your brand will appeal to those wanting to partner with you as they will see a professionalism ideal for cross-marketing. Sharp Instincts can help your team navigate the successful implementation of your style guide. Get in touch today.

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5 essential components of a style guide explained

Your visual ‘flavour’. There are core elements that work in unison to construct the look, feel and unique flavour of your brand’s style. Each of these elements is dissected and described within a good style guide. Firstly, your logo will be at the centre of your branding. This image or graphic may include a word, letter, digits, custom font, image or otherwise. Most of the time, the colours included in your logo will define other elements of your manual. Custom typeface will be used to enhance the brand further to enable audiences to identify a brand even when a logo is not present.

Imagery and footage further extend the visual story for a brand. It is important to have clear ‘must-haves’ to ensure your visual story does not get lost when images and videos are used to promote your brand; things such as filter choices, angles, borders, model types etc. Having a bank of illustrations or edited images to match your style will strengthen your brand and should always be detailed in the style guide. Colour palette is fundamental for instantly connecting your audience to your brand, and relevant HEX codes for HTML will be detailed in the style guide. Language tone for marketing is worth including in a style guide to ensure that all ad content sounds consistent.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Since 2007 we have been a visionary and a reliable software engineering partner for world-class brands. We are a boutique digital transformation consultancy and software development company that provides cutting edge

What is in a style guide?
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What is a brand style guide?

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