A Brand Book – or “Brand Guide” – is an official document that outlines your company’s visual style standards.
It’s essentially a comprehensive guide containing rules for using your brand’s colors, verbal elements, and graphic components.
Having a brand book helps marketers, PR specialists, company executives, and other employees maintain a consistent design and conceptual identity across all communications.
What does a brand book include?
Every brand book consists of graphic, conceptual, and legal sections. Let’s take a closer look at each.
Graphic Section
This section describes the logo and its usage across business cards, websites, brochures, and other promotional materials. Logos are presented with primary and secondary background options for use on stationery, clothing, or merchandise.
The graphic section also covers the slogan and its explanations, composition principles, and ways the slogan can be applied on branded products or in advertising. Corporate fonts and text formatting rules are also essential components.
The brand book should include guidelines for the layout and design of external advertising to ensure all marketing materials maintain a consistent and recognizable style.
Conceptual Section
Here, the company’s story and area of activity are described. This section defines the brand’s mission, philosophy, and core values, which guide not only employees but also marketing specialists when creating campaigns.
Information about corporate culture is included, along with strategies that highlight the advantages of your products or services.
Legal Section
Perhaps the least exciting, but the most important section, as it contains regulations regarding intellectual property and copyrights for registered trademarks.
How much does it cost to create a brand book?
A brand book is not a cheap service. When commissioning one, it’s important to understand that specialists are effectively creating the “face” of your company. The higher the quality of the brand book, the better this “face” will represent your business. For this reason, the cost of a brand book can sometimes exceed the price of the company’s website.
