4 Ways a Brand Style Guide Can Save You Time In Your Business
STREAMLINE YOUR BUSINESS WITH A Brand STYLE GUIDE
Are you wasting time looking for inspiration in all the wrong places?
Does the uncertainty of your brand visuals hinder you from making an impact?
Here are 4 ways that you can save time by using a style guide to streamline your work.
1. Stop Second Guessing Your Visuals
A style guide makes all the tough decisions for you, and allows you to enjoy the freedom to play within your established boundaries with confidence! Take this analogy for example:
A team of landscape architects conducted a simple study to observe the physical and psychological effects of fencing in a playground. How would the presence of a fence impact pre-school children? In the absence of a fence, what would be the consequences?
On playgrounds without fences, the children tended to gather around the teacher, because they were reluctant to stray far from her view. However, on playgrounds that were fenced in, the children ran around the entire playground. They felt confident and free to explore within the established boundaries that the fence provided.
Your style guide is a metaphorical fence. Without it, you may tend to feel confused, or even completely lost on how to keep your visuals consistent with your brand. But with it? You’ll know exactly the guidelines within which you can play.
“A style guide functions like a map of your branD.”
2. Easy Hand-Off
Establishing brand guidelines with a style guide makes contracting out your graphics a whole lot less risky! You can feel (a bit) better about hiring that shoddy designer off Upwork, because you know that the hard work has been done for you already, by a REAL professional. Or use your pre-determined aesthetic to create your own graphics. With a style guide to reference, you’ll simply be following instructions, rather than starting from scratch.
A style guide functions like a map of your brand, and with this map in hand, the less equipped (and less expensive) designers are able to run with your visuals, while staying within your established aesthetic.
In addition to feeling more comfortable handing off your visuals, you will also save yourself a TON of time explaining them. Say goodbye to the days of sharing endless inspiration boards, and farewell to those long phone calls talking through your vision! Simply send over your complete brand style guide to answer any and all questions about your brand visuals. It will save you the headache of relaying all of that information each time you want to outsource graphic work!
3. Effortlessly Draw in New (Quality) Leads!
A style guide ensures that you have strong, cohesive visuals that establish brand recognition with your audience. Impactful graphics catch the attention of ideal clients, inspire others with your message, and get your brand to stand out for all the right reasons.
Boldly and unapologetically step away from the HUNDREDS — if not THOUSANDS — of other people with the same boring templated graphics. Instead, create a one-of-a-kind image that’s impossible to miss.
Not only will you set yourself apart from the crowd and be noticed by the people who matter, but you will also represent your brand consistently by staying true to your style guide.
4. Save Yourself from Endless Scrolling
Do you find yourself falling down rabbit hole after rabbit hole searching Pinterest for inspiration? So much time is wasted scrolling through other people’s ideas, downloading pre-made templates, and purchasing sub-par graphics that don’t even resonate with you and your brand. Now is the time to stop spending your hard-earned money on every flashy Creative Market find.
Once you have a style guide, you won’t feel the need to scour the Internet anymore! Instead of pinning others’ work to a Pinterest board, open your style guide on your desktop. Complete with your logo, color palette, typography, and patterns, you can easily refer to it at any time for the utmost efficiency in your business.
Want to Save Time with the Brand Style Guide of Your Dreams?
I love creating custom style guides to help artists streamline their work. Sick of Pinterest boards and struggling to explain your vision to designer after designer? Let’s work together to establish the necessary guidelines to keep your brand cohesive, even when outsourcing graphics!
