Creating a start-up, running a startup and establishing a start-up are three different things. One requires an idea, the next requires passion & hard-work, the last one requires profits and time. With a startup failure rate of 44 percent around the world, it is a cat race out there. Survival is difficult and as a founder, you need everything in your bag to win the race towards success.
With everything I don’t just mean an idea or a thought – to reach the zenith you must establish a brand, a legacy that you would thrive on. A brand is not just your idea, it’s a name that your employees would work for, would look up to and it’s an identity your customers would see and understand. A Brand is the face of your company.
With a Brand, comes a Brand Style guide. A Brand style guide lists out and portrays what you want your employees and customers to know and feel about your company. It talks about the ideas, the motto, the reality, and the goal. It’s everything that you started with, it’s everything you want to achieve and it’s everything that you want to specify, all in one place. Branding is critical to growth, you should not underestimate the power of a good Brand style guide.
So, to help you with your style guide, we’ve got a few points that you must cover:
1) Introduce it right
A brand style guide gives a visual representation of the tone and reality of your company. Make sure it talks about the background of the company, the work you do and your aspirations in the short and long run during the introduction. Not only does this give readers an instant idea about your brain-child, but it also establishes the right consistency for the whole guide. Make sure your graphic designer knows it well.
2) Colour-specific
A brand style guide, at the end of the day, represents your company. We have seen various landing pages of brand that are super attractive and include a blend of color combinations. You cannot go around playing in a box full of different colours and keep changing things. So, you need to select the right colours that represent your brand, the style, and its logo. Then, they need to replicate appropriately in your style guide with samples and defining Pantones and RGB codes. It is suggested to portray all of them as digital colour is different from colour on paper. For example, Every time someone sees the colour yellow, Flipkart never fails to cross their mind. That’s how impactful a colour can be. Representation is important.
3) Figure out the Logo usage
With the creation of the Brand style guide, you have an opportunity to put forward your company logo to the world. The Logo is what the world remembers you with. Think about Amazon and Netflix, every customer usually remembers the logo, if not anything else. So, your brand style guide needs to create a right logo along with a few other factors which must be taken into consideration.
For starters, make sure you establish the right logo size. It shouldn’t be too small to get ignored or too large to divert attention from other important details. You also need to figure out where you want a full logo (with text) and where you want just the graphics. Once the placement is sorted, you need to find the clear zone area around your logo and how much should it be. Clear zone area is the blank space around your logo to make it look uncluttered and clear. For example, It could be, say 10% of the logo size or more. Moreover, you need to link your logo to the right background colour and colour palette.
4) Create an ‘Image’ Plan
A brand style guide is visual and detailed. Millennials of today are more inclined towards social media. They listen to you and see what you do over there and make an assumption about you. So, it is necessary your brand style speak the millennials language. With the modern world, you use images and graphics to impact consumers within a short span of time. This is exactly why you need to specify and work to clarify, what kind of images would your company use and work with. It could be simple specifications like pictures of real-life situations. Or it could be more detailed about the images you want to use and you don’t want to use. For example, a picture of an employee dancing after closing a deal can be a great attraction for the viewers or your prospective clients.
All these details are mandatory and extremely important while building your very own Brand style guide. Don’t miss out on any step, take tiny steps towards your goal, and there is absolutely nothing that would be able to stop you to reach the Top!
Featured Image Credit: Unsplash
Author Bio:
Prince Kapoor is a seasoned Marketing Analyst and Blogger at ViralChilly . With his skills, he has been helping fellow marketers and brands worldwide.