Brand Bibles

A  Brand Bible  (or style guide) establishes guidelines for all aspects of a company's visual Brand representation to ensure consistency across all communications. Your visual Brand sets the tone and can influence your Brand’s reputation. Therefore, having guidelines in place will help your team create unified and professional content that is instantly recognisable to your audience.

Image Credit: Walmart Logo Guidelines

While its important to set rules for colour and font use, the essential part of a Brand Bible is how you communicate with your audience.
​This can be everything from your colour scheme to wording of content, and even when to use certain types of imagery. Each element has a careful balance to ensure what you're communicating is acceptable for your intended audience.

Whether you’re a ‘one-man’ small business, or large multi-national corporation, a Brand Bible will guarantee every employee knows the fundamentals of your Brand. You’ll often hear the term ‘elevator pitch’ as a way to concisely describe who you are and what you do. This kind of information is vital to your Brand and can be effectively distributed to staff through a Brand Bible.

The bigger you grow, the bigger your Brand Bible tends to be. You may start out with only the specifications for your website, but that may soon grow to include brochures, adverts, press releases, product packaging and more.

How big are Brand Bible documents?
Often, you’ll find your Brand Bible will grow as your business does. However, as a general guideline, most Brand Bibles include:

     •    Business Overview
     •    Logo and rules for use
     •    Typography and colour palettes
     •    Image style and use
     •    Writing style
     •    Website style and guidelines
     •    Social media guidelines
​

For Small Businesses, the task of building a Brand Bible can help you define who you are and give you an insight into how the Brand looks online and in marketing materials. It’s an insightful document which will encourage effective communication between you, your Brand and your target Audience.

Things to remember
When starting out, there are a few things you won’t want to forget or your Brand will suffer. As you begin to write out your Brand Bible you need to be honest about who you are and what you do. Communicate simply and clearly, make it easy to read by anyone. Keep visuals strict enough that your Brand is consistent, but loose enough that your team can be creative with it. Finally, remember to lead by example, particularly when using visuals, include examples in your Brand Bible to show your team the way.

As well as remembering to communicate honestly and clearly, there are a number of traps that many new and small businesses are at risk of falling in to. So, make sure you don’t micromanage, too many rules around your Brand can be overwhelming and leave no room for creativity. Another potential minefield when creating your Bible, is forgetting your tone of language. This is an official business document and will set the tone for every piece of communication linked to your Brand, be sure to keep the tone consistent.

So you have your Bible, now what? 
Ideally, update your Brand Bible annually. Most importantly, be sure to update if you have developed and changed any aspect of your Business values or vision. 


Remember, your Brand Bible should be a fundamental piece of your Business Plan, and should help to inform your business by creating a visual framework.