Brand Building 101: Anatomy of a Brand Guide

When it comes to branding, many businesses think they've got things covered with a quick document that shows their logos, colors, and fonts. Maybe it’s a sleek PDF, a couple of pages long. Voila! A Brand Guide!

Except—that’s not actually a Brand Guide. That’s a starter pack, the bare minimum of what you need to begin developing your brand’s visual identity. Just imagine trying to build a house with only a hammer and a handful of boards. You’ve got the basics, but without a clear vision, detailed blueprint, and solid implementation plan…well, let’s just say you won’t be moving in anytime soon.

A true Brand Guide is so much more than a visual cheat sheet; it's the ultimate playbook for your brand’s identity. A good Brand Guide should truly guide, ensuring that regardless of who you’re working with or what projects you're tackling, your brand remains consistent.

So, exactly how do you build a Brand Guide?

Brand Guide Basics

A Brand Guide is an in-depth, comprehensive document that lays the groundwork for your entire brand’s visual and communicative identity. Here's what you should expect it to include:

The Strategy Essentials

A good Brand Guide offers a holistic view of your brand, covering strategy essentials, including:

• Brand Positioning: Defines where your brand sits in the market compared to your competition.
• Brand Purpose: Clarifies why your brand exists.
• Who You Are: Details your brand’s purpose and values.
• Brand Promise: Specifies what your brand guarantees to its customers, practically and emotionally.
• Core Messaging: Establishes how your brand communicates and the key messages it conveys.
• Brand Voice & Tone: The personality and style of your brand’s communication.
• Brand Theory: Explains the underlying principles and philosophy guiding your brand’s visual and communicative identity.

The Visual Essentials

A thorough Brand Guide should also cover the nuts and bolts of your visual identity, including:

• Logo & Logo Usage: Primary logo as well as secondary and tertiary versions, plus how and how not to use them.
• Color Palette: Your brand’s official colors, their hierarchy within your branding, why they were selected, and how they should be used.
• Fonts and Font Hierarchy: Primary typefaces for the brand, explanation of their hierarchy, and how and where they should be used.
• Imagery: The style and type of images that represent your brand.
• Visual Elements: Including icons, illustrations, and other visual callouts. 
• Layout: How elements should be arranged on various platforms.

Application Examples

Many branding agencies or marketing firms fail to provide concrete examples of how to apply your brand in various contexts. At Quill, providing concrete, real-world use case examples for your brand is part of our Brand Guide ethos and is included in every single Brand Guide we create.

We believe a Brand Guide can only be truly valuable if it provides a vision for implementing all the information it contains. That’s why each of our Brand Guides offers a wide variety of application examples so you can see what your visual identity looks like when it comes to life. These include anything from website layout, trade show display, business cards, brochures, social media posts, ui design and other use cases that make sense for your business.

What is a Brand Book?

A Brand Book is a smaller, more accessible document that differs from a Brand Guide in both scope and purpose. While a Brand Guide documents the strategy structure and rules for maintaining consistency throughout your visual identity, a Brand Book is designed for everyone in your organization—not just the designers creating assets. Think of the Brand Book as the CliffsNotes of your Brand Guide, providing a high-level overview of the brand’s core identity including purpose, promise, values, messaging, etc..

Your Brand Book is for everyone in the organization and is ideal for onboarding new employees. It helps everyone understand the organization's DNA without getting into the finer points of visual identity or activation strategy.

Why Your Business Needs Both a Brand Guide & a Brand Book

All organizations, regardless of size, should have a Brand Guide. The length and complexity of this guide will depend on the breadth of your brand applications. However, Quill recommends that businesses, even small businesses, have a separate Brand Book. Your Brand Book will help everyone in your organization stay aligned with the brand’s vision, ensuring cohesive representation across all touchpoints.

Anatomy of a Brand Guide from Quill Creative Studio

Still not sure of exactly what to expect from a comprehensive Brand Guide? Take a look at these examples for Quill clients.

Great Northern

Great Northern’s Brand Guide captures their commitment to sustainability and distinguishes each sub-brand while remaining consistent overall. Their identity refresh leverages their long-standing logo to create unique iconography with structural consistency. Their Brand Guide also provides multiple examples of real-world contexts in which Great Northern might implement their brand.

Good Foods

With rapid growth underway, Good Foods, known for its wide array of natural and organic products, recognized the necessity for a comprehensive Brand Guide. This tool was essential to align team members and external partners, ensuring steadfast consistency in their trajectory moving forward. Quill’s Brand Guide provided detailed visual identity breakdowns like logo version, do’s and don’ts, and color palette hierarchy.

Momentum Carnivore Nutrition

Momentum Carnivore Nutrition’s brand strategy evolved from the idea that when you give your pet momentum with nutritious food and treats, it’s cause for celebration. We created a color palette using bright, bold colors that align with this root idea and customized each of their products with packaging using these colors, as well as a carefully constructed font hierarchy.

Time for a Brand Guide upgrade?

The Brand Guide is the blueprint for your brand’s identity, and without one, you may find a lack of consistency in brand communication that has far-reaching consequences. When you keep your brand consistent and based on your brand values and strategy, your brand will feel authentic. When your brand feels authentic, it instills confidence in your customers, solidifying their trust in your brand promise and fostering long-term loyalty.

At Quill Creative Studio, our Brand Guides always go above and beyond, providing comprehensive insights into not only the visual identity but also the core messaging, values, and strategic direction of your brand. If your business needs a Brand Guide that sets you up for success, let’s chat!