- We're talking about how to create a brand style guide
here on The Journey.
All right, we're talking about
how to create a brand style guide,
but I think it's important
to talk about why it's so important.
- Yeah, sometimes it's hard for people
to make that investment early on
when they're growing their business
but that's actually the perfect time
to create a brand style guide.
- Right, and even if you have a well established business,
it's not too late to create that brand style guide
because it's going to save you a tremendous amount of time
whether it's redesigning a site,
designing a site for the first time,
creating your social content, creating content,
just in the wild,
whatever you're doing that brand style guide
will constantly be referenced for years to come.
- And it's going to make sure
that you have a consistent image and brand
across all of the different marketing things
that you do.
- Yeah, it's super important
before you go and create the brand guide,
you really have to understand
where your current and future vision is for your business.
And then you have to answer a few questions, right?
Like what are the foundational components of your brand?
These are things like your logo, your type,
your color palettes, your jingles, whatever that is,
they will be the core of your brand.
So it helps to really understand to have those defined
and even things as simple as your font, right?
You want to have the same font throughout all of your copy,
whether it's website, social, print,
it has to be uniform,
it has to be the same.
So make sure you have that down is foundational.
- Yeah, so start with a brainstorming session
and then you can move forward
and actually decide what the components are.
- Yeah, and the next question we really need to ask is
what is our brand's story?
And we talked about our brand story in a lot of episodes,
but this is really the foundational "why" behind your brand.
- This is what's gonna create that bond with your customers.
People love to shop local.
Put that story into words,
you know, what is your why?
And tell that story.
- Right, like GoDaddy's why
is helping the everyday entrepreneur.
And we show that in all of our brand messaging.
We even have our real customers come in
and do videos and content for us
because we really believe
in putting them in front of our brand.
And same with you,
what is your brand story?
Put that in front.
- And speaking of customers,
who are your customers?
That's another thing to be thinking about with this,
you know, whether it's your demographic,
your ideal customer.
A lot of times people will be like "Oh,
anyone, anyone's my customer".
But that's way too general
when you're thinking of marketing,
you need to know who to target,
which areas they live in.
If you're a bed and breakfast,
maybe it's not just the local people
you're wanting to target,
maybe it's other areas, other cities
where you're getting a lot of your guests from.
Those are important things to think about.
- Yeah, and with your brand too,
if you envision your customers,
you tailor all your content to that customer.
Now, if you don't do this
and your brand's completely off
from what your expected customer thinks,
they're gonna look at your brand like "No,
that's not for me.
I'm this type of person",
and you're trying to advertise to this type of person.
It just does not connect.
- Okay, so now that we have this consistent idea
of what's gonna go into this
let's actually put it into action.
- We are going to make a style guide,
but I'm gonna kind of flip it on you
and make one for you.
Personal branding is all the rage,
and as a personal brand,
you probably should have a style guide too
even if you have your business itself
or it's just your brand.
So I'm gonna ask you a lot of questions.
Are you ready?
- It's okay, I've been needing to do this anyway.
Let's go!
- Cool, so we're gonna go to canva.com.
Canva is a freemium tool.
Most of the things we're gonna talk about today
are the free features inside of Canva.
But once you're inside
and you set up an account,
if you haven't already,
just go ahead and type style guide at the top.
The reason why I'm having you do this
versus one from scratch,
is it makes it a lot easier to update.
I know many of us may not be the creative types,
and having to do something from the ground up
is a lot of work.
Why not take something that's already there
and then just tweak it to your brand?
So, I'm gonna have you go through this
and pick a quick style that you like.
We can always update it as we go.
So just let me know.
- [Alex] I'm very indecisive Nealey.
This is gonna take a while.
- [Nealey] Oh, I know.
Cue the music.
(Alex hums the Jeopardy theme)
- [Alex] Okay, let's do
the top right one.
- [Nealey] The sound recording studio?
So yeah, as I was saying
this guide itself is meant to present
like if you're in front of a board,
but we're gonna update some of that stuff.
It just has a lot of the elements
that we want to keep in our brand.
So-
- [Alex] Oh, I play the guitar now.
- [Nealey] Alex Wilkins.
And then you can delete any element that you may want.
I'm gonna delete that.
And then I'll delete that.
So what are some of your favorite colors?
- [Alex] I would say navy blue.
So a little bit darker.
- [Nealey] So,
that?
- [Alex] Darker.
- [Nealey] Darker.
- [Alex] Perfect, perfect.
- [Nealey] Alright.
So, that's gonna be your primary color there.
As your brand guide
that super dark blue color,
dark like my soul. - [Alex]Really speaks to my soul.
- [Nealey] Then you have our brand Ethos.
So branding and the bigger picture.
So this is really gonna be your story.
And we're not gonna have to go through this now,
but this is where you'll type things like,
why do you do what you do?
What is your brand all about?
What is your brand story?
and your voice there.
So you'd add it there.
Since this is a personal brand,
it's gonna be pictures all about you,
but let's also try to find some pictures
that you might use on your website.
So when you think of pictures and places,
what are some things that you think of?
- [Alex] I think of
Austin, Texas, where I'm from.
That's a huge part of who I am.
Has a lot to do with my personality.
- [Nealey] Okay.
- [Alex] Oh, look at that.
Look at Austin.
- [Nealey] So this is a paid image.
Let's see if there's any free ones, perfect.
Austin, Texas, right there.
- [Alex] Perfect, Congress Avenue is there there.
- [Nealey] Oops.
I think we're gonna update the background to your dark blue.
What's your second favorite color?
- [Alex] Let's go with like a light purple.
- [Nealey] Light purple?
Alright, so let's see.
- [Alex] And what's great is
you can save these color codes
so that you can use them at other things
that you're creating as well.
- [Nealey] All right, so let's see light purple.
- [Alex] Oh, actually let's do light turquoise.
Yeah, but lighter. (Alex laughs quietly)
- [Nealey] Workin on it, workin on it.
Like that?
- [Alex] Lighter.
Yeah, perfect.
[Nealey] All right, so in Canva what's cool is
as soon as you change one element,
you can go down to the bottom here
and change all of that orange color
we just did to that element.
And then we would just adjust everything else.
Probably make this a different color here.
There we go.
All right, so you'd have your brand Ethos.
Basically your story behind yourself.
All right, let's talk about your personality.
This isn't talked about a lot with a brand,
but your business has personality.
Whether it's super professional.
It could be over the top hilarious.
It could be serious,
whatever that could be.
So give me four words to describe Alex Wilkins.
- Definitely not serious.
Let's start with fun.
- [Nealey] Okay.
- [Alex] I like to have a good time. (silently laughing)
Creative. (Nealey typing)
Let's do...
Determined. (Nealey typing)
And passionate. (Nealey typing)
- [Nealey] And then this has a little bit of a description.
We're gonna go ahead and skip past that,
but you'll want to elaborate
on what those actually mean to your brand.
Like, how is your brand fun?
How are you creative?
How are you passionate?
Things like that.
And then let's go forward here.
So I like this one it has iconography.
So iconography is just the icons you'll use on your website.
It just helps when you design a site
to have the same uniform icons throughout
that make sense to your brand.
We're gonna go ahead, skip past it.
All right, and then here you'd have your logo usage.
So we'd have your logo here.
Obviously you're not a computer
since you're a personal brand.
It'd probably be your lovely face.
But if it's a business,
it's going to be your logo.
Let me just search
Canva here for a logo
and see what pops up
and we'll just add something there.
Are you a crab?
- [Alex] I actually am a cancer so that works. (both laughs)
- [Nealey] All right, let's do it.
Which one? Which crab do you want?
- [Alex] Hmm, let's do this cartoon one.
- [Nealey] This lil guy, all right.
- [Alex] That one's fun.
- [Nealey] All right, that's a universal sign for Alex
is a crab. - [Alex] That's my logo!
- I dig it, but logo usage.
You'll have some information here
on what you'll use the logo for,
the dimensions, the size, the spacing,
and any information that helps someone else
pick up your logo on your site.
So I'll go there.
Color guidance, how to use your brand colors.
Again, add content on how to use your colors.
We're going to update these to include what your colors are.
So, since this is obviously your color,
I'm gonna just get rid of that.
We'll make that black.
But in Canva here,
all on the left hand side is all the different elements
you can add to your site.
So let's add a square.
We're just gonna go to elements and go to shapes.
That way we can update the color here.
And then change that color.
And I can duplicate it
and add your other color.
And I'd probably do a third color just as a compliment,
and that would be a nice white tone
based on your dark colors.
Got to balance it out a little bit.
All right, so there's a cool site called sessions college.
It has a color calculator
and it helps you really find
the different complimentary colors for your base color.
So if you're a business that only has one.
You only know what other colors might go good with it
this is a great site to do that.
So with yours, I know you have yours
and it does look great,
but say you only had one
and you were really on the fence of where to go
you can add in this hex code
and then see what the complimentary color is.
And it'd be a brown.
Dark like my soul.
- [Alex] Really on brand.
- [Nealey] And then split complimentary.
And then triadic colors.
And tetradic colors.
- [Alex] So, can you change one of those colors
and then have it adjust?
- [Nealy] Yeah, you can adjust all of it.
But it just shows you
what are basically the exact opposite
of your complementary colors.
And that doesn't mean that you have to use those colors.
They just work together.
- [Alex] Yeah, it just gives you some ideas,
- [Nealey] But I do like your dark blue
and your light blue.
- [Alex] Thank you, thank you.
- [Nealey] All right, so color guidance.
You add your colors there.
I would probably add some texts
so you can add the hex color so anyone can easily copy
and paste it over.
And again, add some information on how to use the colors.
Maybe like a percentage.
So if most of your site should be 80% that dark blue,
10%, the light blue,
and then the other 10%'s the white there.
- [Alex] And I could even include,
"Hey, I don't want to use the light blue
on the white because it's really hard to read".
- [Nealey] Exactly.
All right, and then topography.
So you're gonna talk through your type on your website,
on your content, on your print.
So there's a ton of topography to choose from.
The list literally goes on and on.
Google.com/fonts is a great site to go
and try to find new type font faces.
And it also shows you complimentary types
that go with the one you've chosen.
So we'll just have you pick one really quick
as we go through it.
Is there any font
that you may like.
- [Alex] Amatic SC?
I think that's what it said?
- [Nealey] Alright.
Amatic SC.
And then you would just change that
throughout the site.
I dig it.
It's kind of like a little handwritten letter.
It looks personal, right?
So you just change that throughout the site.
Typically you'd have your one type to be your primary,
like the headings on your website,
and then you have type to be your just body text.
- [Alex] Right, like I would never want to use that font
for writing a ton of text.
It would be really hard to read
and wouldn't look professional.
[Nealey] But as headlines, it definitely stands out.
It's different, it's unique, I dig it.
So then you'd update throughout your brand guides.
What's the size of different headings?
So that way it's uniform.
Are all h1 tags gonna be 54 pixels in height?
Are all h2 40,
all h3 30,
or whatever that looks like.
Have that listed out on your brand style guide
to where again, if anyone picks up your site,
whether it's one of your employees,
a contractor, developer, designer,
whoever follows that to a tee,
and then it looks uniform.
- And this can also be really helpful
whenever you're creating a graphic design
that you want to post on social media platforms.
That would be really great to know those fonts,
what to use.
If you're adding text to a photo,
anything along those lines.
- So we talked about photography a little bit
in the beginning.
You were all about Austin, Texas, and food
and everything else.
So we'll go ahead and add different examples there.
So with your brand itself,
add images that really represent your brand.
Doesn't always have to be of your business.
It could be just types of feelings
and emotions you want to invoke on your audience.
- And the photos that you want to use.
Like you were mentioning earlier with those stock photos
what types of stock photos
you kind of want to generally follow.
- [Nealey] Exactly, so we'll update that.
What's your favorite food?
- [Alex] Let's go with french fries,
'cause those just sound really good right now.
- [Nealey] She hasn't eaten breakfast.
- [Alex] I can't pick a food.
- [Nealey] All right, what other thing?
So we have Austin, Texas.
We have food.
What other thing represents you?
- [Alex] Puppies. (both laughing)
- [Alex] This is a great brand style guide. (Alex laughs)
- [Nealey] All right, all these are adorable.
What kind of puppy do you want? (Nealey laughing)
- [Alex] I want
this one.
- [Nealey] This little guy?
- [Alex] I don't know how to describe it.
- [Nealey] Adorable, that's how you describe it.
So photography, and again,
add some description on your photography
of
again, the feelings that you want to invoke
on your audience.
When someone looks at your site,
looks at your images,
what do you want them to feel?
Whether it's like excitement
or whether it's lovingness,
whether it's caring, whether it's sadness.
- [Alex] Whether it makes them really hungry.
- [Nealey] Yeah, yeah.
Hungry for those french fries in Austin,
while playing with puppies.
Like what could be better?
- [Alex] Living the life!
[Nealey] And then here it has a guide to using images.
Again, neutral background,
use of white space, use of overlays.
Super important to have as much information
as you can come up with.
And now this is a ton of information.
Start small, start with what you know,
and then grow from there.
So as you're developing your site,
you're developing your business.
You can add onto this
and it's an ever growing process.
- Yeah, you don't have to go as in depth
right at the very beginning,
but you always can if you want to.
- Absolutely.
And then you've talked about it a little bit.
So social media is also super important.
I think it's very, very important,
especially just aesthetically
to have the same type of content throughout your page.
So whether that's using kind of the same templates,
getting the same typography, the same colors,
the same images, super, super important.
So the good thing about Canva
is that you can essentially create templates
of your social posts
and then continually reuse them.
So I'd recommend maybe three or four different variations
of your different types of posts you may create.
And just constantly update the images,
update the text, of course,
to be whatever you're wanting it to be.
And just continue to use that.
And then add some of those template examples
in this brand style guide so that way when someone sees it
they know the type of content to create
and go from there.
- [Alex] And that's how you're gonna get
that really aesthetically pleasing Instagram feed.
- [Nealey] Got to have your grid game on point.
- Yeah, exactly.
Okay, so now that we've created
this great brand style guide,
what if my personal brand changes?
Can I change this up?
- Absolutely.
This is again, it's ever growing.
Start with what you have now,
and as you evolve just like you do as a person
or you do with your business,
your brand guide evolves as well.
- Cool, well thank you so much Nealey.
Can't wait to show off more Austin,
french fry, and dog pictures. (both laughing)
- Yeah, not a problem.
I hope this helps you create your brand style guide.
Whether you're an established business
or one just starting out,
it's crucial for the success of your longterm business.
Thanks so much for watching.
Make sure you like this video
and add a comment below
if you create a style guide yourself.
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whenever we have more great videos like this.
Thanks for watching The Journey.
We'll see you later.