How to Create a Brand Style Guide

A brand style guide is the single source of truth for how your brand looks and sounds. Without one, every designer, developer, and marketer makes their own interpretation — and your brand slowly loses coherence.

This guide covers what to include in your style guide, how to format it, and how to make sure people actually use it.

Why You Need a Style Guide

A style guide ensures consistency across:

• Different team members working on the brand
• External agencies and freelancers
• Multiple platforms and touchpoints
• Time (as team members change)

Without documentation, institutional knowledge lives in people's heads. When they leave, the knowledge leaves too. A style guide makes your brand self-documenting.

Essential Elements

At minimum, your brand style guide should cover these five areas. You can expand later, but start here.

1. Color Palette

For each color, document:

• Color name (e.g., "Brand Blue")
• Hex code (#3B82F6)
• RGB values (59, 130, 246)
• When to use it (primary buttons, links, accents)
• When NOT to use it (avoid on dark backgrounds)

Include your full palette: primary, secondary, neutrals, and semantic colors (success, warning, error).

2. Typography

Document your fonts with specific details:

• Font names and where to get them (Google Fonts, Adobe, etc.)
• Font sizes for each use case (H1, H2, body, captions)
• Line heights and letter spacing
• Font weights (when to use bold, medium, regular)

3. Logo Usage

Your logo section should cover:

• Primary logo file (SVG, PNG, different sizes)
• Clear space requirements (minimum padding around logo)
• Minimum size (smallest the logo can be used)
• Background requirements (which colors work)
• Don'ts (stretching, rotating, recoloring)

4. Tone of Voice

Describe how your brand communicates. This is harder to define than visual elements but just as important.

• Brand personality in 3-5 adjectives
• Writing style (formal vs casual, concise vs detailed)
• Example phrases that sound "on brand"
• Phrases to avoid

5. Application Examples

Show your brand elements in context. Seeing real examples is more useful than abstract rules.

• Button styles (primary, secondary, states)
• Card layouts
• Email headers
• Social media templates

Format Options

Brand style guides come in different formats depending on your audience:

PDF Document

Best for: Sharing with external agencies, printing, executive presentations. Easy to share but hard to update.

Web-based (Notion, Confluence)

Best for: Internal teams, living documentation. Easy to update, searchable, can embed interactive examples.

Design Tokens (JSON/CSS)

Best for: Development teams. Export your colors, fonts, and spacing as code that developers can import directly.

Figma Library

Best for: Design teams. A Figma file with components, styles, and assets that designers can use directly in their work.

Recommendation: Maintain multiple formats. PDF for external sharing, web-based for internal teams, and tokens/Figma for practitioners.

Keeping Your Style Guide Updated

A style guide is only useful if it's current. Tips for maintenance:

• Assign an owner — someone responsible for updates
• Version it — track what changed and when
• Make it accessible — if people can't find it, they won't use it
• Review quarterly — schedule time to audit and update

Getting People to Actually Use It

The best style guide is useless if nobody follows it.

• Make it easy to find — Pin it in Slack, bookmark it in browsers, add it to onboarding docs
• Make it easy to use — Include copy-paste hex codes, downloadable assets, ready-to-use templates
• Lead by example — Leadership and senior team members should use it consistently
• Welcome feedback — If something doesn't work in practice, update the guide

Next Steps

Ready to create your style guide? Our brand builder lets you design your brand and export a complete style guide in multiple formats — PDF for sharing, CSS variables for developers, and Figma tokens for designers.