Corporate Intranet

What is a style guide?

The style guide houses all of the relevant standards, requirements, and recommendations surrounding your brand. Covering from the tone of voice to the visual presentation all implementation aspects, specifications, attributes and elements you can think of.

It is a complex, detailed document that attempts to meet the needs of a range of users. It has different main chapters such as the stationery, the corporate web site, the advertisement material ( brochures, flyers, billboards, story boards etc.).

The style guide is a living document and needs to be updated when changes such as re-branding, adding new sections to the corporate web site, using media channels that have never been used before, are taking place. It is a complete guide to understand your brand and the implementation and how to communicate it.

Why does a brand need a style guide?

The brand identity and brand essence is documented. A strong brand has a definite personality, and it is on this personality that customers base their opinions and eventual relationship. In order for your brand to build a strong online and offline brand, the personality traits and attributes on which the brand is built must be documented so that developers, graphic artists marketing and communications understands and comprehends why they have to comply to these standards and why they have to use for example these color codes for the logo only.

Specifically the usage of the logo, the placement, size and the allowed background colors are documented down to the smallest details. These brand attributes reflect your brand's goal and its personality and have to be effectively communicated to your customers and this is why a style guide helps you to guard your brand's consistency.

The style guide makes it possible that your brand is speaking with one voice even if three different departments located in three different locations are presenting your brand to your customers. In case there is one day a question which cannot be answered by the style guide, we have to add a new section which is defining how we have to handle this new situation. This is also the reason why we refer to the style guide as a living document.

How does a style guide help my brand?

Document the desired brand attributes for 2005/2006 and beyond and you will see it is easier for your staff to follow up these guidelines and requirements, because they can simply look them up at your Intranet or they can consult a printed version. They can see and will understand the reason behind demands.

When a brand is for example re-branded to effectively make the “invent” theme tangible for your customers, you must communicate new brand attributes in everything you do. Therefore the new brand attributes have to be defined and documented in the style guide.

When there is no web site yet and a company is hired to develop a corporate web site they should consult the style guide first to present the brand consistent and loyal to its brand image on the internet. The style guide has to be updated when the media portfolio of the brand is extended (as in this scenario of the the corporate internet web site ). This means the chapter "Internet" will be created and added to the corporate style guide, with all its details such as design rationale, guidelines, specifications of all elements and the implementation rules for the Web.

The copy writers and technical writers will create a comprehensible handbook from the collected data of the internet project and add this as a chapter to the style guide. The persons responsible to maintain the site will have clear answers and rules to the questions when adding sections. This helps your employees to make the right decisions in communicating the brand and present it, live it, communicate it, visualize it to the public in a consistent manner.