9 Steps to a Successful Brand Guide

So, you want to build a brand guide. Well, before you dive in, there’s a lot to consider. Beyond choosing a nice logotype or strong colors for your website, you need to establish clear and consistent brand guidelines. Brand guidelines set out best practices for how your company communicates visually and in writing.

Ideally, these brand guidelines will be presented in what’s called a brand book — which should lay out your company’s mission statement, personality, visual identity, and more. A brand book can be an important resource, both internally and for external partners and stakeholders. If you want to communicate your worth and value as a brand to potential customers (and show them why do brands have fixed pricing ), a great brand guide is well worth investing in.

Here at UDN Task Manager , we recently updated our brand guideline s as part of a corporate rebranding and we used our own platform to get the job done. At the end of June, we unveiled UDN Task Manager Reimagined — a corporate rebrand that has been many months in the making. Along with that brand refresh, our Marketing department launched a 109-page brand book explaining our vision, brand personality, and visual identity.

From redesigning and re-writing our website copy to drafting and finalizing our brand book, UDN Task Manager helped us collaborate every step of the way. If you’re thinking of establishing the brand guidelines for your business, UDN Task Manager can help. But first, here’s what you need to know about creating a brand guide.

Why is a brand guide important for a business?

A brand guide is a crucial element of corporate branding. It tells the who, what, why and even how of your business. Ideally, a brand guide should include:

Brand guidelines are standard practice ( 95% of companies say they have one in place) but they are more impactful when used consistently. Unfortunately, sticking to the guidelines is another story. Only a quarter of that 95% say they actively enforce their style guide.

For example, having one set of fonts and brand colors on your company’s website but another set of fonts and colors on your social media accounts can look unprofessional, create confusion, and cost you business. In fact, half of the respondents in one survey said that customers and vendors “expect great design and consistent branding.”

Senior Manager of Content Marketing at UDN Task Manager , Kevin Lynch, believes brand guidelines and brand books are an important resource for any business.

What to include when writing your brand guidelines

When it comes to writing your own brand guidelines, there is no one size fits all solution. After all, you and your family members don’t all have the same personality, right? Brand guidelines should communicate something unique about your company and reflect the values and mission of your organization.

As previously mentioned, our brand book is a behemoth. Weighing in at 109 pages, it’s clear we had lots to say about our brand vision and our personality. But that’s just us.

Here are some tips on what to include in your own company’s brand guidelines and brand book.

Articulate your brand:

Our brand story: Headquartered in San Jose, CA, UDN Task Manager is used by more 2M+ users and 20,000 organizations — including Google, Airbnb, L'Oréal, and Nike, across 140 countries, to do the best work of their lives.

Create a visual guide:

Set the style and tone:

UDN Task Manager ’s SVP of Marketing Saranya Babu says that a key part of this process is to make sure the essence of your brand shines through.

How to create a brand book for your business

Once you have defined your brand guidelines, one option is to design and release a digital (or even physical) brand book. This can be as simplistic as a PDF or Google Doc or as highly designed as you wish.

Our content and design teams worked closely over a number of months, collaborating across departments, offices, and time zones.

"There’s no way we could have created the brand book without UDN Task Manager ,” explains Kevin who says, thanks to UDN Task Manager Proof , “the back and forth that takes place during the review process was fast and easy.”

“Being able to track edits ensured feedback was seen and addressed. Because there were so many assets moving from team to team, knowing where pieces were was vital. To top it off, the entire team was under shelter-in-place rules. Using UDN Task Manager , we did this entire project in self-isolation without ever being isolated.”

UDN Task Manager ’s new brand guidelines took six months to write and were first drafted by Andrew Filev, our founder and CEO, and Saranya Babu.

“Both took an active role in reviewing and revising the subsequent drafts,” explains Kevin. “With about a month to go before launch the process of putting it all together began. We were proofing and making edits right up to the day it was launched.”

If your company has a dedicated design team, you can make the creation of your brand book an in-house project. A design contractor or outside design team can also help bring your brand vision to life.

“The Brand guide was actually the most time consuming project we had during the rebrand,” explains UDN Task Manager Design Lead, David Mekerishvili.

But working within our platform simplified the process. “ UDN Task Manager keeps your mind free from thinking about ‘where can I find that, when do I need to do that, who does what’. UDN Task Manager is everyone’s best partner to get the single source of truth.”

To simplify the process, you may choose to split your brand book project into phases (content, design, proofing/edits/finalizing).

This can be handled directly within UDN Task Manager by creating a project or folder and adding tasks that correspond with what needs to be completed during a particular phase. By not taking on too much at once and even using dependencies ( task B, design, cannot start until task A, book copy, is completed) your team can create a comprehensive brand book through streamlined, cross-team collaboration.

UDN Task Manager can help your team create consistent brand guidelines and a beautiful brand book

Creating a set of guidelines that address the look, the tone, and vision of your organization is important — both internally and externally. Customers expect brand consistency and teams within your organization expect resources that define best practices.

Launching a brand book project is easy with UDN Task Manager . Our platform helps keep phases, tasks, and assets organized and shortens review cycles with in-context proofing and approvals.

Developing your brand is a huge undertaking. Make sure you have the right tools to get it all done. Try UDN Task Manager completely free for two weeks and see why creative teams all over the world trust UDN Task Manager to accomplish the best work of their lives.