Your style guide is all the colors, photos graphs and graphics that create your brand. The photography should all have similar lighting and content that represents your business.
The style guide should contain your logo, possibly a secondary icon, font(s) and photography that represent your what you stand for.
The color palette should be used on everything!! From your website, printed marketing materials, and your social media graphics. You want to make sure your audience instantly recognizes you.
The fonts in your logo don’t necessarily have to be used on your website or marketing materials, that can possibly be a separate font that is used on a regular basis to keep everything consistent.
This is an example of a 4-page style guide that I created for a client. You can see the logo and a sub logo, plus all the colors and fonts that I used in the logo are here.
When working with the Graphic Designer, make sure the “outline” the fonts in your logo. Once the font is outlined, there is no way to know the name of the font. If someone that is using your logo for a project does not have the font, it will default to a basic font. That’s why it’s important to have the name of your font so if you do need to make any edits, and you have to work with a new designer, they will know what fonts to use and not have your logo change drastically because of a missing font.
Your logo should also be created in Adobe Illustrator, no exceptions! Adobe Illustrator is a program that creates vector files that can be in large to any size. If your logo is designed in Photoshop, like any photo, it will be pixelated after enlarging after a certain point. You will also be limited on how you can use it, for example, embroidery cannot be done from a JPEG file or any Photoshop file.
If I can help you with a new logo or refresh an existing logo, contact me today. You can send an email to Myrn@GalanGraphix.com to start a conversation. You can see the logo options and prices I offer here.