Style guides for brands, logos, magazines and websites

It tells your designers, printers, web developers and marketing team the essential information about your brand – such as which logo to use, which colours and fonts, and how much space to leave around them.

Without one, the internal staff and outside suppliers that use your brand will make it up as they go.

That’s how your logo ends up in the wrong colours or stretched beyond recognition. It’s how a website ends up with three shades of blue or uses a font that bears no relation to your chosen typeface.

There’s plenty of advice below but if you have a project in mind, you can contact us here.

Boylen has been designing brands and publications for Adelaide organisations for more than 30 years. Here’s what a good style guide covers, and two we’ve produced.

Which style guide do you need?

It depends on who will use it. Most organisations need one or more of these:

• Brand style guide. The master document. Logo versions, colour palette (Pantone, CMYK, RGB and hex), typography, imagery, tone of voice and how sub-brands sit under a parent brand.
• Logo style guide. Short and focused. Clear space, minimum size, approved colour versions and the things you must never do to your logo.
• Magazine or newsletter style guide. Page templates, type specs for headings, standfirsts, body copy and captions, image rules and the production checklist for every issue.
• Website style guide. Headings, buttons, link colours, spacing and components. Used for the design and build stages – and for updates so your site stays consistent long after launch.
• Social media/Editorial style guide. Spelling (Australian English, please), capitalisation, numbers and the voice your writers use.

Two style guides from our studio

AHA|SA logo style guide

The Australian Hotels Association (SA) logo gets used by members, sponsors, printers and event organisers. Most of them aren’t designers.

So the guide is deliberately short. It defines the four elements of the logo and gives one Pantone colour with its CMYK and RGB breakdowns. It sets a 40mm minimum width so the strap line stays readable, plus an exclusion zone and the approved reversed, black and white, and greyscale versions.

A couple of pages. No guesswork.

Platform magazine style guide

The magazine no longer exists but Boylen published Platform, the onboard magazine for Great Southern Rail’s The Ghan, Indian Pacific and The Overland.

A magazine guide does more work than a logo guide. Ours locked in the masthead position (it never moves), the cover line fonts and sizes, contents page rules, body copy at 9pt on 12.5pt leading, three-line drop caps, pull quotes and caption boxes.

It also covered production: when to hold the editorial meeting, who proofs what, ad placement and so on.

The result? Any designer could work on the next issue and it still looked like Platform.

Why bother?

Because consistency builds trust. People recognise brands they’ve seen before, and they notice when something looks off, even if they can’t say why.

A style guide also saves money. Designers stop debating the basics. Printers stop guessing colours. New staff stop reinventing your logo in Canva.

How we build a style guide

We start with what you have. Some clients arrive with a new logo and nothing else. Others have a 50-page brand book nobody reads.

Then we build the guide for the people who will actually use it. A printer needs Pantone references. A web developer needs hex codes. A volunteer making a flyer needs three simple rules.

At the end of every Boylen branding project, you receive an agreed style guide and your artwork in multiple file formats. You also own the copyright.

Frequently asked questions

What’s the difference between a style guide and brand guidelines?

Often nothing. The terms get used interchangeably. Where there is a difference, brand guidelines tend to include strategy (values, positioning, personality), while a style guide focuses on how to apply the brand day to day. Larger organisations usually combine both in one document.

How long should a style guide be?

As long as it needs to be and no longer. The AHA|SA logo guide fits on a couple of pages. Our Platform magazine guide ran to about a dozen. A corporate brand with several sub-brands can run to 40 pages or more. But the secret to success is making it easy for everyone to use. If people won’t read it, it won’t work.

Do I need a separate style guide for my website?

Usually, yes, or at least a web section in your brand guide. Print specs don’t translate directly to screens. Your developers need hex codes, web fonts with fallbacks, button and form styles, and colour contrast that meets accessibility standards (WCAG). We can build it as part of your website project or add it to an existing brand guide.