Design, UI, UX, Insights, Inspiration
14 Brand Style Guide Examples That Showcase Exceptional Visual Identity
Let’s see how each example implements the best practices and what we can learn
Crafting a strong brand identity is vital for success. A brand style guide is the cornerstone, providing guidelines for consistency and recognition. Whether you’re a startup or an established company, it’s essential. It streamlines marketing and maintains a memorable image.
A comprehensive brand style guide includes:
- Logo Usage: Clear guidelines for visual integrity.
- Color Palette: Specific codes for consistent branding.
- Typography: Defined fonts for a professional look.
- Visuals: Guidance on imagery that aligns with your brand.
- Tone and Voice: Establishing a consistent communication style.
- Brand Messaging: Crafting key brand messages.
In this article, we’ll explore 14 brand style guide examples. Analyzing their strengths will inspire your own impactful guide. Let’s dive in and discover the power of brand style guides.
Mozilla Firefox Brand Style Guide
Mozilla Firefox brand guide impressively communicates its brand personality. The guide’s visual representation truly embodies the voice, tone, and brand identity it describes. This correlation is evident in various branding elements: color palette, voice, tone, visuals, etc. Firefox confidently spells out the characteristics of its brand personality, embracing opinions and pride in openness, radicalness, and kindness.
Their impactful statements don’t solely rely on words or large fonts. Firefox’s brand colors speak volumes – deep purple, dark pink, bright orange, and bright red express their brand personality vividly. These color choices align perfectly with the descriptive words used to define their brand.
Color psychology plays a role in this coherence. Red is bold and attention-grabbing, orange represents creativity and adventure, purple exudes royalty and extravagance, while pink conveys love and playfulness. These choices seamlessly match Firefox’s brand personality words.
What’s done right in Mozilla Firefox’s brand style guide:
- Effective communication of brand personality
- A clear correlation between visuals and brand identity
- Bold statements conveying brand characteristics
- Cohesive color palette reflecting brand personality
- Creative exemplification of the tone of voice
- Qualifying brand personality in the voice section
Intercourt Division Attorney At Law Branding
Next, we have Badhan Islam‘s law firm branding for Intercourt division attorneys at law. The brand identity includes a brand style guide and social media posting. The project showcases the logo in various alignments and media types. The style guide features a luxurious, formal, and modern look with a suitable blue-magenta and light shade of yellow color scheme and Century Gothic font.
What’s done right in the brand style guide:
- Clear presentation of logo usage in different alignments and media
- Well-defined blue-magenta and light shade of yellow color scheme
- Use of Century Gothic font for a modern and luxurious feel
- Demonstrating business cards, letterhead, envelopes, and social media cover designs
- Exuding a professional and authoritative tone
Netflix Brand Guidelines
Netflix prioritizes its public brand assets, particularly emphasizing the treatment of its logo. The company provides clear guidelines for the size, spacing, and placement of its iconic capitalized typeface, along with a single color code for its classic red logo.
What’s done right in Netflix’s brand style guide:
- Clear rules for logo size, spacing, and placement
- Consistent use of the iconic capitalized typeface
- Single color code for the classic red logo
PRYZ Sneaker Platform Brand Identity
Billie Tuitt presents the PRYZ Sneaker platform brand identity—a concept for an authentic sneaker resale platform, specializing in rare, exclusive, and collectible sneakers not found in traditional retailers. The brand exudes a wild, sporty, and fun vibe, embracing crazy display fonts and playful animations.
What’s done right in the brand style guide:
- Showcasing logo grids of the custom font
- Utilizing bold typography and a sporty color scheme
- Ensuring easy contrast with product photos
- Presenting website design with product section, social media posts, and app layout
- Incorporating engaging logo animations
- Featuring package design and thank you cards for physical deliveries
Kristen Sanger Freelancer Personal Brand
Introducing Kristen Sanger‘s personal brand style guide and logotype—a freelance designer with a unique handwritten logo, typography, and brand message. The project focuses on a grid layout for online presence and font choices that effectively communicate the brand message.
What’s done right in the brand style guide:
- Showcase of the logo in various positions and backgrounds, including the sub mark version
- Effective use of colors with great contrast and creative combinations of neutral and neon shades
- Utilization of 5 different fonts that harmoniously blend for creative typographic titles
- Readable sans-serif fonts combined with hand-written accents for emphasis
- Stunning and elegant overall brand design.
Medium Logo Usage Guidelines
The Medium brand style guide effectively utilizes direct visual examples to aid understanding. It includes diverse and specific explanations to reinforce brand guidelines. For instance, their typographical explanations demonstrate setting headings, body copy, and pull quotes with easy-to-navigate examples. Thoroughness is essential – no concept is over-explained.
Medium’s brand identity is deeply connected to its logo and name, carefully designed for visual harmony. Originally a virtual publishing platform, Medium aims to provide a platform for undiscovered voices to share their writing on any topic.
What’s done right in Medium’s brand style guide:
- Utilization of direct visual examples for better understanding
- Diverse and specific explanations to reinforce guidelines
- Thorough typographical explanations
- Carefully designed logo and name for visual harmony
- Reflecting brand mission and position through the style guide
- Embracing a clear, clean, and simplistic format in line with the origins of printed text
Slack Brand Guidelines
Slack brand guidelines define its unique voice as the ultimate business tool. Designed to be the only networking and engagement application needed, it stands out with smooth curves and vibrant colors, breaking the monotony of the industry.
What’s done right in Slack’s brand style guide:
- Defining a unique voice for the brand
- Clearly portraying itself as the ultimate business tool
- Incorporating smooth curves and bright colors for excitement
- Differentiating from the monochromatic industry norm
Huddle Club Branding Concept
Huddle Club brand style guide by Kelsey Brookes—a concept offering a carefree environment for youth to showcase talents and hobbies. The brand tone exudes wholesomeness, warmth, and invitation with a beautiful color combination of little girl pink, linen, and deep aquamarine, paired with retro 70s magic fonts.
What’s done right in the brand style guide:
- Clear presentation of typography and colors usage
- Showcasing logo elements and brand patterns
- Providing merch samples and image usage guidelines
- Embracing a wholesome and welcoming brand tone
- Harmonious color combination for a visually appealing look
- Utilizing retro 70s magic fonts for a unique touch.
Neom Social Visual Identity
Mariana Ramírez Feijoo develops Neom’s social visual identity, communicating the brand’s core values through a cohesive graphic concept. The language creates a unified visual ecosystem across all communication platforms, showcasing beautiful imagery of exotic places, serenity, and luxury. Nature inspires everything, from logo shapes symbolizing growth and discovery to patterns, pieces, and image usage.
What’s done right in the brand style guide:
- Creating a cohesive visual communication language
- Using nature-inspired elements for a consistent look
- Specific color scheme instructions for text and background combinations
- Defined typography usage for various text types
- Incorporating text animations, user flows, and mobile experience.
Blessing Ive Kumagah Personal Branding
Blessing Ive Kumagah‘s personal brand guidelines reflect her expertise in branding, social media management, and UI/UX. The brand exudes creativity, knowledge, and professionalism through trendy visible lines and borders, a perfect combination of green, orange, and ivory as solid colors and gradients, along with custom typography.
What’s done right in the brand style guide:
- Trendy visible lines and borders for a modern look
- Strategic color combination conveying creativity and professionalism
- Custom typography adding uniqueness to the brand
- Inclusion of CV mockup, logo usage, business cards, and package design
- Incorporation of holographic stickers for added appeal.
Zendesk Brand Identity System
Zendesk, a leading provider of customer support software, infuses a refreshing twist into their perceived dull industry. Their brand style guide truly reflects their unique brand identity, prominently expressing their essence.
A standout feature in Zendesk identity guidelines is their use of “Relationshapes” – simple shapes that symbolize various platform functionalities and features. Each “Relationshape” comprises two shapes, representing the idea of two people engaging in various interactions. According to Zendesk, this signifies the uniqueness of each product and how relationships can be diverse, encompassing talking, walking, fighting, agreeing, annoying, supporting, and loving.
What’s done right in Zendesk’s brand style guide:
- Putting a fun spin on a perceived dull industry
- Prominently expressing their unique brand identity
- Creative use of “Relationshapes” to symbolize different platform functionalities
- Symbolic representation of relationships and product uniqueness
Spherum App Brand Style Guide
Spherum brand style guide by Motka Design shows off the 3D video creation app using a phone camera. The style guide effectively showcases brand integration within the software through a volumetric video interface, app interface, web, and VR player.
What’s done right in the brand style guide:
- Clear presentation of brand integration with the software
- Showcasing volumetric videos interface, app interface, web, and VR player
- Providing exact color scheme for solid colors and gradients
- Defining the usage of three fonts
- Including social media post mockups for consistency.
Spotify Design Guidelines
Spotify‘s style guide goes beyond a simple green design, showcasing the depth of its brand. It features a concise color palette with three color codes and emphasizes logo variation and album artwork guidelines.
What’s done right in Spotify’s brand style guide:
- Incorporating a simple yet impactful green design
- Providing a concise and well-defined color palette
- Focusing on logo variation and album artwork guidelines
- Offering downloadable logo icons for easy representation
SPOTSIE Branding Guideline
And last, is the SPOTSIE branding guide by Tallulah Viney. This is a vibrant brand aimed at teenagers and young women, encompassing summer vibes and youthful design with bubbly colorful shapes, soft bubbly fonts, and aesthetic beach photos.
What’s done right in the brand style guide:
- Clear presentation of the brand mark concept and its origin
- Specification of the three brand marks and their proper usage
- Detailed guidelines for opacity of shapes and image specifications
- Minimization of the logomark for smaller spaces with exact clearance
- Defined color schemes and variations for different products
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Let’s Wrap It Up!
To sum up, the power of a well-crafted brand style guide lies in its ability to communicate a unified visual identity, leaving a lasting impression on consumers and reinforcing the brand’s positioning in the market.
Throughout these examples, we’ve observed that successful brand style guides:
- Establish a unified visual language: Clear guidelines ensure consistency across all brand touchpoints.
- Embrace creativity while maintaining professionalism: A balance of innovative design elements with a sense of formality resonates with audiences.
- Utilize color psychology: Carefully chosen colors evoke emotions and align with the brand’s personality.
- Showcase versatility: Presenting different logo variations and usage scenarios allows for flexibility across different platforms and applications.
- Integrate typography thoughtfully: Selecting appropriate fonts enhances readability and reinforces the brand’s voice.
- Cater to various media: Incorporating guidelines for digital platforms, print materials, and social media ensures a cohesive brand presence.
- Reflect the brand’s core values: The style guides visually communicate the brand’s essence and unique selling points.
We hope you enjoyed these 14 brand style guides and got hyped to craft some for your personal brand.
In the meantime, let’s explore more insights and resources on web design and web development by checking out our other articles!