By The Book: Create a Style Guide for Your Brand

1. Introduction: Hi everyone. Welcome to By The Book: Create a Style Guide for Your Brand. In this class, I'm essentially going to pick up where I left off in my previous brand identity class. If you didn't take the class, don't worry about it. For one, you can actually still sign up and have lifetime access if you think that content can be beneficial for you. But otherwise, really all you need is a completed brand identity system that is ready to be put to use. By the end of the class, I'm going to show you how to translate those identity elements into an actual style guide book that you can share with your clients and outside vendors so that the identity is implemented consistently and in the way that you envisioned it across the board no matter what media you're working with. This video is just essentially going to be an introduction to style guides themselves. I'm just going to go over very briefly the basics and show you some examples, and then from there in the future videos, we're going to dive a little deeper into each of those specific topics. To back up a little bit, I just want to give you a little bit of information about my background just so that you understand the frame of reference that I have when I'm working on this type of project. I know many of you took my brand identity class already, so I won't go into too much detail. But just to give you a quick overview, I run a small design studio called Seamless Creative with my husband, Brian. I primarily do all of the design work and run the day-to-day and he is a Web developer, so he works with me on all of my web-related projects and then also works with me a lot behind the scenes and does a lot of the high-level conceptualizing stages of projects with me. We work mostly with small businesses. When I say small business, I mean very small. Most of the businesses we work with have 1-5 employees and we're usually working directly with business owners, which is definitely how we prefer to work. As we go through the videos, you're going to see that my perspective on doing this type of work is very much through the lens of someone who works with very small, tight businesses as opposed to someone that works with large corporations and is completing huge, involved, complex style guides on a regular basis. Just briefly, Design Work Life is my other main project that I work on, which is a design inspiration blog, where I feature all design-related work and products and apps and things like that on a daily basis. We're actually just as an aside, going to be relaunching both of these sites in the next couple of months with new design, new content, new contributors to the blog. If you haven't been following along up until this point, now might be a good time to check it out just because we're really revamping things and you might find some information there that would be beneficial to you. Here's just a very small sampling of some of the brand identities we've created for small businesses over the last several years. A couple of these that you're seeing here, I have created style guides for, but I'm going to actually take you through style guide for a brand that you don't see here. I'm going to be using that throughout the videos to guide us through the process. As I mentioned before, my background is primarily focused on working with small businesses. This really does inform my process and approach to style guide development in general. While I have designed style guides that span different types of content and vary in their length and their level of detail, I haven't worked on a guide for a major brand or a large corporation, which tends to be very extensive and involved. I've definitely found some examples of these which I'm going to share with you throughout the lessons just so that you can compare. But primarily, my work is on a smaller scale. I'm mostly going to be showing you through the process with examples from my personal work. That will really just be a jumping-off point for you. You can just take those basic lessons that you're going to be shown and incorporate your content based on what your particular brand needs. I just want to quickly mention that this is an intermediate class, so I won't be going into too much depth about the design basics that you'll need to know to set up a document like this. I will briefly touch on some of it. But since it is intermediate, I'm not going to give you a whole lot of design lessons. I will though, like I did for my last class, provide you with a bunch of different links to tutorials and learning resources in the resource PDFs that will be alongside each unit. That way if you feel like you need help in one certain area then you can on your own time just look into that and try to educate yourself more on the subject before you proceed with the project steps for this class. Now that all of that housekeeping is out of the way, let's just get right into the content. We are going to start with a very basic definition of what a style guide actually is. First, just let me mention that sometimes this is referred to as a brand book or brand guidelines. The name really doesn't matter, it's essentially just a document that provides guidelines for implementing a brand identity. They all mean the same thing and you can use whatever you prefer. My preference is just to call it a style guide, essentially for aesthetic reasons. Once a brand identity leaves your hands, you run into the issue of ensuring that it's implemented in the way that it was intended to be, with care and consistency across media and by different people, which can really be a huge challenge. For many designers, the ideal solution may be to just design everything yourself and know I've fallen into that trap before, but it really isn't a realistic solution a lot of the time. A style guide really helps to ensure that your vision is executed properly no matter who is actually working on the brand. There really is a wide spectrum of what this looks like in practice. As you can see here, are just some page layouts from one of the style guides I've done for one of the small businesses I've worked with. I'm going to show you a couple of pages from this in closer view as we go through the videos, but I just wanted to give you an overview of what some of my style guides look like here. As I mentioned, there's really a wide spectrum of what this looks like. Usually, the guy comes in a PDF format. I would say that's always at least one file type that it comes as. Nowadays, people aren't printing things like this out as much, they'd rather just have a reference on screen while they're designing. But a lot of companies do want an actual, physical printed copy. When I'm designing a document like this, I tend to make sure that the document is formatted for both so that it can be easily viewed on screen, and then it can also be printed if the client chooses to do so. Then beyond layout, the content can also be instructional or it can be more conceptual. My projects definitely fall on the more instructional end, but I'm going to show you an example of conceptual design as well, just so that you can see what those options are. Now, an instructional guide provides more regimented instruction for how to implement the nuts and bolts of the brand, while a conceptual guide provides more of an abstract mood for the brand. Of course, your design and content can fall somewhere in between, it really depends on what the needs of your brand are. Overall, a style guide is definitely not the most creative project ever, but the approach that you take to the design itself and the delivery of the content is where you can really take some creative license. I'm just going to go through a couple of examples with you and show you some examples outside of my work right now of instructional versus conceptual on what a style guide can look like. This is the Foursquare Brand Book. By the way, also in the resource PDFs, I'm going to provide links to all of these documents so that you can download them yourselves and flip through them yourselves and use them as reference throughout the creation of your personal project. Like most of my guys, this has a table of contents. You don't absolutely have to use a table of contents, but it depends on what your content allows. I would say if you're going to do something over eight pages, which most of you probably will, I would include a table of contents because it just allows someone to very easily flip to the section that is most necessary for them. Foursquare has an introduction in here, which is something a little bit optional, [inaudible] go over optional content and essential content in future videos. Logo usage is one of the essential pieces of content that I recommend. So they start outright with that. They also have icon usage, color palette, copy and tone of voice, typography. They have a whole style guide that's involved after this, but I'm going to just stop here and move on to a conceptional example. Like I said, this link will be in the resource PDF if you want to look through the entire thing. This is an example of a more conceptual brand book or style guide. This is by I Am Always Hungry for the Jack Daniels brand. As you can see here, their full-page layouts are layered with photography and typography and different graphics, but there isn't a whole lot of instructional content like this is how you use the logo, etc. These spreads really evoke more of a mood of the brand and what the different graphics should convey. That is just another approach that you can take. Now, I'm going to show you a few pages from the I Love New York guidelines. I should also mention that a lot of these guideline examples I'm going to show you are a couple of years old, so they might not be 100 percent accurate today, but I think they are good examples still to look at to see how different brands execute this type of project. This really starts out identifying their audience. They take an interesting approach to the design here, it's not quite as straightforward as what I tend to use, but it's also not super conceptual. They go through a lot of explanation about their concept, their tone of voice, and different pieces of the brand. This is one thing that I really like about this guide, is that they do their type specimens in a really fun and interesting way. By creating the structure and showing the type which is used in so many different formats that really gives a designer, or someone else that is looking at this great perspective at all the different ways this typography can be used. They do this with all of the typefaces, if I should say. Then they go into a little bit of their print campaign, which we are going to talk about as being optional. Piece of content a little bit later on. Here's some various examples. Now, I'm going to move on to just showing you two more examples, different ways to set up a guide. This is the Cisco brand book. This is a really awesome example, I think for a very big brand, that does the design and the content in a really just beautifully designed way. I'd definitely recommend flipping through this one in its entirety, just to get a really good example of a way that a larger brand does a guide in a not boring way, which I think that they can tend to be when you're dealing with larger corporations. I'm just going to scroll quickly through Section 2, which is starting with a brand identity system. They have a little introduction to each section. They do an overview page which I really like. I haven't seen this done very often, but I like the idea of showing an overview of all the different elements on a page and collaging them together so that the user gets an idea of what the overall brand elements are supposed to look like when they're paired together. I do this a little bit more when I'm actually working on a brand identity project, and presenting a full suite of identity elements to a client. But I don't usually do this in the style guide, so I really like to seeing this idea here. Then they go into the brand palette, and you can see that this is pretty extensive. It's not your simple three color brand identity system, this has a lot of components to it. They break it down with an additional table of contents at the beginning of each section. Again, they have an introduction, which I think is nice to have some more background information. Then they go into the logo elements, all different ways. We're going to go into a little bit more about these specific pieces of content a little bit later on. Then they're showing the logo in use here in different ways that I think is interesting also. Then we're getting into color, same thing with the description at the beginning of the section. An overview of the colors and a description of how they should be used, and then further breaking the colors down. They have, like I said, a pretty complex system of colors and different palettes, and how the palettes work together in various situations, which I think is really interesting to see. Then also showing the color in use. This is another thing that I don't see too often, but I really like how they did this here. Then typography is all set up exactly the same with an introduction starting, and then an overview, and a little bit more detail. I like they're being a little bit more playful here with some of the typography. Then they get really specific with leading and tracking, and hierarchy, and color usage, and the type, which I think is really important for a brand that's this large. It's going to be producing as many pieces they'll be producing across so many different media. These are specific things that will really ensure that the brand is as consistent as possible across all those different things. Then again, showing typography in use. I really like the idea of this. It reinforces all of the content and the information that you've got on the previous few pages, and shows how to bring them together. One more guide example for you. This is the guide for a Barbican, which was actually re-done pretty recently. I think this is a pretty good example of a guide that falls in between instructional and conceptual. A little more towards the instructional side, but I think it's good to show a bit of a range so that you can get an idea of the different possibilities that you have when you're setting this project up. Again, table of contents, they simplify this a ton. Just to break it down into three sections as opposed to showing where everything is specifically on each page. They definitely are pretty playful with the way they use design in the guide, so you'll see that as I flip through. Here, they're showing imagery and stuff that is very much conceptual about who the brand is. Again here. Then starting in this next section which they call rules and tools, is where they get into a little bit more of the instructional side of things. Starting with the Wordmark, and going into how it's used, typography, and just flipping through here more. They just go into detail about how the different elements of their identity should be used. So it's interesting, I think, to see how they mixed the two conceptual and instructional styles by keeping them in separate sections, but they still incorporated both. So I think that's definitely something to think about as you work on your projects, if that's something that would be beneficial for your brand. That's a good overview, I think, of the different types of style guides you can create when you're working on your project. It really depends on the brand that you're working with, and what their needs are, what type of pieces they're going to be producing, and what kind of brand it is. Is it a buttoned up corporate brand? Is it a more creative brand? Those are things that you should start thinking about, and that's going to really inform the direction that you go in. Next step, we're going to go over Style Guide Content. 2. Style Guide Content: - Hi, - everyone. - Welcome Teoh Unit One video to where we're going to talk about style guide content. - There are several items that I consider essential to include in a style guide, - but there are also many pieces of content that should or should not be included, - depending on the brand you've developed as well as your client needs. - So what we're going to do in this lesson is to quickly go through the essential and - optional content. - For a start, - guys that you can start thinking about what you will need to pull together for your own - project. - And then in Unit three, - I'll go through each section in more detail so 3. Style Guide Design: Hey everyone, welcome to Unit 2, where we're going as talk about style guide design. Now that you have a content outline determined, this is the next step. Throughout this video, I'm essentially going to go through the project steps that come along with this section, and show you how I've gone through them myself or the style guide that I've already created for a client, and give you some tips for how to do that. As I mentioned before, I'm not going to go into a ton of detail about how to use these programs and design basics, but I will provide some resources for you in the PDF if you feel like you need to get some more learning under your belt for any of those specific things. As I mentioned before, designing a style guide isn't the most exciting project ever, but this is where you have a chance to be a little bit creative. In terms of general design, what I do is actually take the elements from the brand identity I'm working with and use those to establish the design for the book. It gives you an opportunity to actually take those elements and apply it to a designed piece here. The book itself becomes an example for how to implement the identity. Let's just start going through the steps. The first step is to create a page layout sketch. What I did here is take the content outline that I set up in the previous round and actually lay that content out in terms of actual pages so that I can determine how many spreads are needed for the book. That's something you need to know before you set up your InDesign file. I find it easier to do this visually to get an idea for where things are going to go and what order they're going in. You can skip this if you don't need it, but I definitely find it helpful to visualize things in this way. One thing to remember here is that, if you are ever going to print the document or if you want to set this up to ensure that printing is possible at a future date, you want to make sure that you keep the pages in a multiple of four. This only going to be a PDF and spreads. Multiples of two are totally fine, but I always tend to keep it to four just in case the client decides they want a printed copy down the road, then you don't have to back up and do any additional design work at that point. Now you can do this in Illustrator, or directly InDesign, or you can do just a quick sketch by hand in your sketch book. It's totally up to you. I chose to do it in Illustrator just because that's my preference. I start out with this very basic guide. Then I actually go through each page and write on the page what content is going to go there. That's the first thing you want to do just to get a very succinct order of the pages and then that gives you a really big picture view of how your guide is going to be organized, and how the content is going to flow. The next step is to set up your InDesign file. I'm just going to take you over to InDesign quickly to show you how new document is created. This is my InDesign setup. Yours might look very different than this. I tend to change this pretty often depending on how I am working at the time. Don't worry if yours doesn't look exactly this way. Obviously File, New. Then I just wanted to show you this briefly so that if you're not super familiar with InDesign, you can see how the new documents setup works. Here you pick your page size, you can put the number of pages in here right away. Then if you do want facing pages or spreads, you can check that off right away so that the document is set up that way for you. You can also setup your margins, gutter and columns here. I don't always do this. I definitely usually set up margins, so that those are set up for me, but I tend to get the file setup and then work on the grid a little bit later. I tend to ignore this and I always have one column here, but knowing that I can change that later. You can also click on this more Options section and that gives you even more. That allows you to put a bleed in, which is helpful if you're designing something for print, then you already have that setup so that you don't need to worry about adding it later. The next step is to establish your grid. I'm going to take you over to InDesign to show you how to do that also. Now I just created a quick 24 page document with facing pages. As you can see over here in the pages palette, you can scroll through and see how the spread setup here. By the way, as an aside, sometimes I actually put the page layout that I sketched that I did. I actually place the words that describe the content that's going to go on each page in my actual document. Sometimes that's just a really helpful way to be able to quickly scroll through your document and know what content is going where so that you don't have to necessarily flip back and forth from your InDesign document to the contents sketch. To determine the grid, simply go to Layout, Margins and Columns. Like I said, I'm not going to go super into detail about things like grids. There is so much theory and knowledge involved in how to set up a grid that I just couldn't possibly cover all in this short class. I'm going to provide resources in the PDF that's attached to this unit, that will provide you with some more guidance about grids and how to set them up correctly. In this section, in this box, you can actually change the margins if you feel like you didn't set up the correct size. Just most of you should know this, but if you click off of this lock that separates the margin so they're not tied together, so you can change them to different sizes this way. Otherwise, if it's locked, they all stay the same. Now this is where you can change your actual grid. Tend to always do at least a four column grid. Usually actually more than that so that the content can be divided up in more ways, so that you can do a five column and a three column here when you working with eight columns, you can do two or four column widths. There's a lot of different options. I tend to do eight or 12 columns at least. Then the gutter really just depends on personal preference. You want to make sure you're allowing enough space between columns so that there's breathing room between type or images depending on how you're going to set up your actual pages. Then the next step is to design your page layouts. Now I tend to design my page layouts before my covers. I just seem to find that easier. But if you'd like to design the cover first, that's perfectly fine. I'm just going to go over to InDesign quickly. Here you can see the style guide that I'm going to be showing you as an example throughout the class. What I do first before I actually design anything is determine the different page or spread types that I need. As you can see here, we have this an intro spread where we have the inside font cover that's not going to have any content on it alongside the table of contents. Then we have an intro spread that's going to be an introduction to a section. Then we have a content spread where there's actual content within that section. You can see all those repeat themselves. So scroll through. That essentially means I have three different spread types that I want to design. Now how you go about the design is completely up to you. I just wanted to show you an example of what I did here. Now what I do is again, take the elements from that brand, and figure out how to apply them to the design itself. I usually go through a lot of different revisions with this until I get to something that I like. What you're seeing here is the final layouts that I've chosen. What I do once I come up with the design that I like is create them as master pages, because that allows you to copy that page style multiple times, as many times as you need really quickly and easily. If you're unfamiliar with that, I'm going to show you how to do that really quickly. In the Pages palette, you can go to New Master and you can create as many of these as you need. You can change the prefix and the name here if you want. I'm just going to leave it there for now. The number of pages applies here. If you're doing spreads and you have master page elements that you're going to apply to both pages, make sure you put two in here. Otherwise you can just do one. Then you'll see a spread appears up here in the top of the Pages palette. Then I have this blank canvas here. I'm just going to show you with one of the pages I already set up. Now you can copy this from InDesign or create a directly on the master page spread. It's entirely up to you, the process that you take to set this up. Since I'm just showing this as an example, I pasted this from the document in place onto the master page. Now this would act as a template essentially for the intro spreads. If I go ahead and add more pages at the end of my document, do Insert Pages, I add two after page 35 so that they come in right before the final cover. Then I have two blank pages here, but they are right now labeled master page. That's the default since that's the main page here. I'm going to apply Master to Pages and choose C. Then that shows up right here. Now everything that you place on a master page is locked when you apply it to pages. You can see that what I've done is in my different sections I've colored them differently to separate them a little bit them and edit them then. This is to place your cursor over the element you are trying to change and do shift command, click. Then that unlocks our particular piece. Now I can go in here and change the text if I want to. Then you just repeat that with whatever other elements that you want to change, otherwise they all stay locked and you don't even have to worry about them. Just a very brief overview of how I set the pages up. Again, this is where you can be really creative and take the brand that you create it, and actually apply it to something. It's your first really good chance to do that in a somewhat large-scale layer. As I mentioned, I do my covers after I design my page layouts. I just find it easier to come up with a cover design that sums up the whole book once I know what the inside is going to look like. That's why I do things in that order, but you don't have to do it that way. I set these up the same way as I just showed you for the interior pages where I make a master page, and then apply that to the front and back covers as long as they're similar, and then just edit any elements I need to edit. Otherwise if they're very different, I just make separate master pages for them. Then if you want to change any elements, all you have to do is go into the master page and edit the content there. That way it will just quickly and easily apply to any spread that has that master page link to it. Now when you're doing this design and you're coming up with the pages, the main thing you want to remember is that the content really comes first here. The main goal of this piece is for it to be used by multiple different people, in multiple situations in a very quick and easily digestible way. When you're coming up with the design of the pages, you want to make sure that one, yes, you're reflecting the brand in the design elements themselves, but they are also allowing for enough space to provide the content that is necessary to the user. Make sure you're keeping that in mind as you design. Next up we're going to start getting into the actual details of the essential content for a style guide and we're going to start with logo usage. 4. Logo Usage: Hey everyone. Welcome to the start of Unit 3, where we're going to go into a bit more detail discussing the different essential and optional components for style guide, starting with logo usage. The first piece of content you want to include as an overview of the logo types, so this should just be a simple page that gives the user a very basic look at the different types of logos that are available for your brand. As you can see for sloan taylor, this is a very simple text-based logo. This is really the only option that is available. For my overview, it's extremely simple, which as you will see, is the approach that I really take across the board. All my overview really says is that this is the logo, this is the primary logo, this is what you want to use most of the time, and that any variations of this logo are available in the various formats that you might need. Now, this particular brand has a tagline that is designed in a very specific way and set in a specific color palette, so those details really warrant their own separate page and description and in the guide, so you can see how I split that out here. In the description, which again is very short, I'm giving you an overview of what this tagline means and where it comes from, and then also going to into a little bit more detail about the specifics. In this specific case that is identifying what typeface is used here and expressing that artworks available in different formats and in a couple of different color options. This is the third page that I've included in the logo usage category, and this just gives an overview of the different color options that are available for the logo. Although this brand has one typographic logo associated with it, it is available in three different color variations. The first is this primary blue color, which is also translated to CMYK, as you can see on the right, and then it's also available knocked out in black. The description on the left simply goes over this very briefly and explains what format should be used where and when. The second section that goes within logo usage is a size requirements. This really is something that can be determined in a few different ways, but essentially you really just need to do some experimenting with different applications. If you haven't established those by the time that you're putting the star guide together, it's something that you just might want to take the time to do a quick exercise and test things out. The main things you want to show here are the maximum size the logo can be used at if there is that rule, the minimum size that the logo can be used, and another thing that I include is the scale. Here, what I did for the maximum size is the maximum size that the logo can be used on an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper since that is the most common printed piece that's going to be distributed or created by anyone using the guide, I wanted to make sure I gave that guideline. Then the minimum size is the smallest size of the logo can be used and still be readable in various applications. Then also what I'm doing here for the scale is to show what the logo would look like if it's sized properly for an 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper, and then I mentioned here that that's shown at 40 percent scale, so that gives the user a perspective of how that would actually size up to the real size of 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper. Then the overview on the left side, I described that the logo should generally be size to about 20 percent of the document size you're working with, and I definitely mentioned that that's a matter of judgment based on a particular piece, but that way at least gives the user a starting point and something to work with when they're setting up a new document. Then the next section is area of isolation. This is really important because you want to make sure that the logo stands out on whatever application it's being seen in, and one way to really ensure that that's done is that there is sufficient white space around the logo itself. This isn't something that necessarily works for every single brand, but I would say the vast majority have some instance where this applies. Again, the way that you determine the spacing is open to interpretation, and I think doing some experimentation with different applications is a way to solidify the measurements for you, but what I do is always take something from the logo itself and use that as the measurement format that I then applied to the entire area of isolation. In this case, I used the lowercase s, and then created just a very simple diagram that shows one height of the s around each side of the logo and how that works. That gives you a big picture of what the space should look like when it's laid out properly with the correct measurements, and then also just a detail of what that specific unit of measure is. Then the last thing I include is incorrect usage, which you can have a little bit of fun with. You might be surprised at the different ways that a client will use the logo when they aren't given rules about how it's intended to be used. Here is a fun opportunity to do all the things that you never want the client to do to the logo to show them that these are not how to use it. These are just the basic ones that I always include, but you can go crazy with this if you want. Just to go over quickly what I include here. Do not stretch the logo disproportionally, you'd really be surprised how many people stretch a logo in one direction or the other without keeping the proportions consistent and totally distort how the logo looks. Then do not fill the logo with non-brand colors, do not typeset the logo in other fonts, do not outline the logo, that may be something that does not apply to you or to your brand but that's something I found important here. Do not place the logo into a shape, another thing that might not apply to you, but I found important to include here. Do not decrease the opacity of the logo, that's something you definitely want to think about. If you don't want your logo to be tinted or transparent in anyway, that's something I would absolutely point out here because it's an easy thing for someone to execute without understanding that that's a look that they should avoid. Then do not color the logo with other brand colors. In this specific case, the logo itself should only be filled with the one primary brand color, and we have a whole larger color palette, which I'm going to show you shortly, that should not apply to logo, they should only apply to different elements in the brand, so that's one thing I wanted to point out. Then do not use more than one logo on a visual surface, this is something that is important, I think, when people are designing different documents or even t-shirt or something like that. I didn't want the logo to go overboard and appearing to many times. I'll just show a very simple example here of a business card size item with two logos on it to show that it really should only have one. That really covers all the basic logo usage components. Next up we're going to dive into color. 5. Color: Welcome to Unit 3, Video 2, where we're going to talk about color. As with the logo usage, there are a few essential components of the color section that I always include. So I'm just going to go through those one by one and give you a little bit more detail about how I set them up. Generally, I keep my color palette really simple. This is an area where you definitely can elaborate if you feel like that's necessary. It really just depends on what your specific color palette is and how it's used, how you decided to set this type of a page up. The first thing we provide is an overview. In this case, I have actually one full color palette that's broken down into three sections. The primary main color, a secondary palette, which is used most often in combination with the primary color, and have tertiary palette, which is used rarely in certain situations. What I'm doing on the left side here is just giving an overview of the three different palates and how they are used. For example, in the primary section, I just say that this is the signature Sloan Taylor blue color and it should appear on every piece and less restrictions require printing in the grayscale. Then I go into that same level of detail for each of the different color sections. Then a couple other things that I think are worth mentioning here is that, in terms of usage, I explained that whenever possible the PMS color should be used for printing and that RDB should only be used for online or onscreen applications. Those are things that I want to make sure people understand as they're using the guide. The PMS colors, we're always going to get the best match to the colors we initially intended. So I want to make sure that if that's an option, that that's the option they take. Then I also mentioned tinting. Tinting is something that I feel like is done often when it shouldn't be, and these colors, especially for this brand, should always be used full strength. So I want to make sure that that is spelled out, that it shouldn't be tinted at all except for this one gray color which acts as a neutral. Now, color usage, just to zoom in on that same page, a bit more, is just something that you want to think about is, do you have different variations in your color palette? Do you have different sections that need to be broken down further, and are there any special instructions that come with the colors such as tinting? Another thing that I include here is white. This comes into play for several brands that I've done, but especially for this one. I break this out actually in a different section in my book, but I want to include it here just to show you how I handle it, since it is technically part of the Color Guide. The main goal here is to just point out that the inclusion of white is essential to the brand, and while it isn't broken down as an actual color in the palette that it's important that every piece includes some area of white to provide relief for the viewer and create balance with the different color pallets on each piece, and that you should use your judgment in terms of how much you should use from piece to piece. Then the color breakdowns. Again, I keep these very simple. I use the PMS color. In some cases, you want to include both coded and uncoded. For me, all of the coded and uncoded colors translated well enough here that you don't need to use different colors, that's not always the case. If there are situations like that, you want to make sure you're listening both. I also have the CMYK breakdown, the RGB breakdown, and the HEX value breakdown. Now, I want to talk a little bit about color translations because I know that's a question a lot of people have had especially in the brand identity class. While I'm not an expert on this, I just wanted to give you some information about the process I go through to create the translations and just give you a jumping off point for that process. Now, just to step back a little bit, and when I explained that I do still, no matter the project, translate these four color breakdowns. I don't think that they're always a 100 percent necessary for every brand. For example, I don't remember the last time that I printed anything CMYK offset, just getting less and less common with the work that I'm doing, but still my overall feeling is that it's better safe than sorry. So I tend to create all these different color breakdowns just so that they are there in case anyone needs them, and then that way you don't have to go back and do extra work down the road when an issue comes up. I described this a little bit in my brand identity class, but just to go through it again, my personal process when I'm doing an identity system is that I always start with colors on screen. Of course, the screen is not a 100 percent reliable in terms of the color translation, because monitors differ so greatly from screen to screen. It always make it very clear to my clients at the beginning brand identity stages that the color isn't a 100 percent accurate, and if they're very particular or detailed oriented about that aspect of the process, I just adjust my process a little bit. In that case, I might go back to the Pantone chips and actually send the client that chips to choose colors that way and then work a little bit backwards. But generally, onscreen works for me as a first step. Then once that color is approved and I'm getting ready to prepare my guide, that's or print something, whichever comes first, that's when I go to PMS. What I do there is that I have an actual set of chips that I pull from and I just match chips as best I can as to the colors so that I'm seeing on screen, and go from there. I know everyone can't always get their hands on an actual chip up because they are really pricey, so I did come across a couple of resources that can give you pan tone transitions, which I'm going to provide in the resource PDF. I wouldn't call that a 100 percent accurate, but I think that it's probably a good enough start if you can't get your hands on chips. From there, then I also translate to HEX, which is very easy from RGB, and I translate to CMYK. I do all of these things in Illustrator, generally in the color picker, and these things are not always a 100 percent accurate, so you definitely have to do some testing. But I always find that this is a really good jumping off point to start with. So that's how I go about translating all of my colors. That's it for the overview and color and next up we're going to talk about typography. 6. Typography: Welcome to Unit 3/ Video 3 where we're going to talk a bit of more about typography. Just to get right into it, typography really is a pretty simple section compared to some of the others. This depends on how much typography you actually have as part of your system, where you have different variations on typefaces, whether how many typefaces you're actually including, etc. It can be bigger than what I'm showing you depending on what your brand requires. The first section that I include is an overview of the typography that is part of the brand. As you can see this particular brand has two typefaces that are primarily used, one is a Sans-Serif and the other is a Serif. Here I always set up a couple of very simple specimens that show the typeface to use in as many different ways as it will possibly seen, used with the brand. I always create a specimen with a headline, a paragraph, and then break out the different letter forms into caps, lowercase, and numbers just so you get a really quick overview of what those look like. Then this particular brand also has a display typeface that is used in much more in frequent instances. Again, I broke that out here and I also just created a very simple specimen. This typeface actually since it is display has a lot less usage options than the primary typefaces do, so this specimen is even more symbol. I do want to point out that this is an area where you can get a little bit more creative. As I've mentioned before I do try to stay more instructional and simple with the graphics that I'm using. But for example if you think back to the I Love New York PDF that I showed you in Unit 1 uses the instructional type specimens, but does it in a little bit more of an interesting way and shows a lot more variations that I'm showing here. You can do something like that as long as you're keeping in mind that the primary reason that you're actually splitting this content out is to show the person using the book that as many usage options as are available for each type face so that they get as greater of the understanding as they can of how they can put that type to use. The second thing you want to explain in this part of the guide is the way that the typography can be used. I simply do this in the paragraph of text on the left side of the page. Again, I keep this very brief, but there are a couple of things that I do want to point out. One is the typeface works for, and two is the actual weight of the type to be used. For example, the first typeface that I'm showing here is Eames Century Modern, and I explained on the left-hand side in that section that this works especially well with body copy and then in call-outs. That doesn't say that it exclusively works in those situations, but it emphasizes the types of situations that I want that typography to be used for. Then the second paragraph also explains that this typeface should always be used in sentence or title case and never in all caps or small caps. That's something that you definitely want to outline in your instructions if those are restrictions that you have, because doing something vowel really change the look of a piece. If it isn't what you intended it's going to definitely impair the consistency that you have in the brand across different media, so that's something to definitely keep in mind. Same with the display, I'm just doing the exact same thing here where I say that this display face is used in limited applications, and that it should only be used for short headlines and sentences and never to set long sections of body copy and then also outlining that this typeface should never be used in all caps. That's something I want to be careful of because this is a display phase especially. I want to make sure that it's always readable, and there's only certain instances that it can be used in that maximize that readability. That's it for typography, typography is a really simple section to put together depending on the elements that are part of your brand. Next we're going to go into graphic elements. 7. Graphic Elements: Welcome to Unit 3, Video 4, where we're going to go over the graphic elements section of your style guide. As I mentioned before, just as with your brand identity, the graphic elements section is going to differ depending on the content you have to work with. I'm going to take you through the graphic elements section of this particular guy that I've been showing you for Sloan Taylor and just show you how I've set that up in this instance. But this is a section that is definitely going to differ greatly depending on the components that your identity includes. This particular brand, as I've mentioned before, has a lot of pattern involved. What I do is start out with an overview page of the pattern and just use a very small swatch of some of the patterns here to give the user an overview of the type of patterns they have to work with and then in the description, just explain that each pattern is available in certain color ways but can be adapted to unlimited color combinations and that also I include the rule that only one pattern should be used per piece, which is very important here because while the brand is pattern heavy, it also requires a balance of color and white space and if you started mixing too many of these patterns, it could get crazy really quickly. That's something I want to make sure I point out. Then as I moved through, I show some bigger versions of the patterns and I actually break them up into smaller categories. The first one I'm starting out with here is the logo pattern, which they have in two options, the full-color option and the option with the primary blue. Again, I'm just including very simple description here that includes only the information they need to know for implementation. The only thing that's really important here to know is that other color variations can be developed in this pattern. The only guideline there is that the Sloan Taylor blue is that the dominant color? Then I'm showing this signature stripe pattern, which I would say technically is the primary pattern of the brand. There's only one of them. There aren't multiple variations, which is why I've used such a large swatch here. Again, I'm just outlining in the description that other variations may be developed as long as the Sloan Taylor blue is a dominant color. Then I have scattered dot patterns. As you can see, I've separated these integers different categories grouping patterns together, so every pattern doesn't necessarily need its own page. This section just shows three different variation on the dots pattern, which can be adapted to any combination of colors and that's what I've set up there in the description. Then I've also mentioned that patterns swatches have been created in these three color ways that you can see to start. Then this brand also features as part of a graphic elements several illustration collaborations. This is something that was intended to evolve over time and change depending on the projects that this client was actually working on. What I did here is just take some examples of illustrators that they were going to be currently working with at that time and included a few examples of their work just as a guideline so that the user can start to see the different styles that the brand will work with. Now I'm jumping to a different guy that I've done here just to show you another example of a graphic element that is part of a brand. In this case, this is for a company called Canopy Health and the use of stock photography was pretty important to them. What I've done here is an overview page that shows one example of a photograph that really gets the point across of the style of the photography that should be used and in the description I just explain that the purpose of the photography is to add warmth to the brand and that images should be chosen that feature children and their families enjoying their time together and an outdoor sunny environment is preferred. That leaves things open and leads so that the user can do their own research and art direction but it gives some clear guidelines so that they have a framework to work with them. Then I also include a second page that just is essentially a contact sheet of a bunch of different photos that all fit, that fit those guidelines so that this is another reference that the user can come back to to see if the photos and imagery that they're picking out fits in with the intention for the brands. Then jumping to another guide. This is for W&T Seafood, which is a small seafood distributor. They have a lot of illustrations, vintage illustrations that are part of their brand that all feature seafood related imagery. This is a really simple page that just shows an overview of four of the most common illustrations and colored in the way that we generally tend to color them. The actual discretion isn't very specific because this is a pretty open ended component of the brand. There aren't strict guidelines as to sizing or how they're used. All the explanation that I've given here is just that these illustrations are used to add a touch of whimsy to collateral pieces. That's all you really need to know as far as this brand is concerned. That also gives you an idea of being open-ended versus being super instructional when it comes to graphic elements such as these. That gives you an overview of how graphic elements can be incorporated into the guide. Then the next video we're going to talk about optional content. 8. Optional Content: In this one, we'll go over some different options you have for content that you want to include on top of the essential components. This will just give you a jumping off point so that you can expand upon it on your own depending on what your client really needs. To get started, what I'm going to do, is go through the optional components that I've included in my Sloan Taylor sample guide. Starting with a mood board, as I mentioned early on, I think this is something that if you've created can be good to include, definitely isn't necessary but I do like the idea that this gives any user a broad view of the visual look and feel that you are going for with the brand. In this case, this brand is very visual and very colorful and very design heavy so I thought that the mood board actually really didn't make sense to include. Then the second thing is the brand essence. As I mentioned earlier, this can take shape in a lot of different ways. I think there's actually a lot of different definitions out there for what brand essence actually is, but how it manifested itself in this case is in two specific things. The first is the Sloan Taylor beliefs, and this is something that the client and I collaborated on together. It's just several short sentences that really gets down to the heart of what the brand believes in. I think this is definitely something that if you've have developed is really helpful to include, even if this isn't anything that you developed on your own for the brand, but if it's something that the client already has and provided to you as a starting point for your work on the identity, I think that this is definitely invaluable and it gives the user a really good basis to work from in terms of the actual emotional and intellectual components that make up the brand itself. You'll see it in some of the applications I show you a little bit farther along. But here is a very simple language page you can get into so much more detail about this depending on what you've developed or what you have from the client that's existing. But for us, we did establish a certain way of speaking to the audience through our applications that is cheerful, welcoming, and conversational, and we describe it here as we speak to our customer as we would for a dear friend or cherished guest. This page just gives a few examples of conversational headlines that we might use in different instances throughout the applications. But rather than being specific directives, I think that this just gives a good overview of the type of style of language we're going for. Then the fourth section that I used here that I think is really commonly seen as an optional inclusion, is applications, not super specific. I'm just giving examples visually of the things that we've designed. They aren't actually photographs, they're just layouts, because there were things that weren't produced at that stage. But I'm not giving specifics in terms of sizing or measurements or anything like that, or providing templates which some brands do. This is just to give the user an idea of, you just looked through all of the different components that make up the identity, and here's an example of how you can actually put it to use. This is an example of business cards. Then some note cards. These are conversation note cards. You'll notice that the language from one of the previous pages is incorporated literally here. Then a mailing label, an envelope and liner, and envelope seal. This can include as many pieces as you have, or it can be really simple. What I did here is just show as much variety as we had for the pieces that we've developed already. The intention is that we can always add more things down the line as we developed them if we felt that they were important for the guide to showcase. I just want to go through a few outside brand examples, so that you can see some other content that you might want to include if it works for your brand. The first is Pfizer. I'm just going to go through this quickly and again, I will give you a link to this and the PDF so that you can download and flip in this guide yourself if you'd like to get a closer look. Of course, Pfizer is a huge brand. Their brand guidelines are very detailed and very complex. This is almost the complete opposite end of the spectrum from the type of work that I'm generally doing, which is, especially, why I wanted to show you. This page is just their brand architecture. It's a very high level description of the way that their brand works together, in terms of their divisions, programs, and products, and how they lay out into this architectural system. Then they go into even more detail about the architectural structure here. This actually breaks down all of their brand colors and shows you the different percentages that are available, specifically for using in information graphics. Then this page actually shows how to set up a grid. What they've done here, is gone really far into detail for anyone's setting up any sort of document for them. They give very specific decimal measurements for the type of page size that you're using, what margin should be used, and then what grid should be used, how many columns, what the gutter size should be, and then the typographic baseline grid. Then they also go into PowerPoint, which is really a common application for a lot of companies right now. If that's something that's used often, that might be an application that you want to include, you might want to show the guidelines for how a presentation should be set up. Now I'm going to jump over Jamie Oliver's guidelines, which is definitely a little bit different, but he also includes some things in here that we haven't seen yet. A large part of what Jamie Oliver's identity needs to apply to is packaging. This particular guide goes into depth about packaging in terms of different audiences, but it's used for and how the design changes based on that audience and application. This just gives you a few different examples of sizes that would be used, and also shows you some rules that are associated with each. Then they followed that up by showing don'ts. Just as we did with the logo usage, this is something you could also include if you think that it would be helpful in terms of your applications or any other section of your guide, really, where you're showing what not to do so that the user makes sure to avoid various applications or executions of the different elements that you definitely don't want to be part of the brand. Again, this is just going into a little bit more detail of the packaging setup in terms of exceptions that are allowed. Another variation on the packaging where it's talking about centering the logo and when that's appropriate and when it's not, and now this is focusing on the back of the package with exceptions. This is focusing on the back of the package when it's a food package and goes into a lot of detail about how that should be laid out, and the different types sizes that should be used, and the different types of weights that should be used. Then now I'm just going to jump over to Demand media. This page is something that I don't often do, but I think could be pretty useful if you have a lot of different assets that you're working with. This is an overview of the different file formats for the logos. On the left it gives them meaning key, which I definitely think could be helpful, especially for people that aren't necessarily used to working with design files and don't know what to look for, that could be a really helpful guide for someone to have. Then it actually shows where each of these logos are located in the folder structure that's provided. Now this is more details about the logos, which is an essential component, but this specific usage is not always necessary or applicable. Here they have a logo that they're calling an attribution badge. This has to always be placed and used in a specific way. They're showing them separate. Then also actually placed on a page and how that that would work. They've also showed a primary and secondary placement preference. Then here they're just showing examples of end-use, which I always think is a great idea. Then this brand has these arrowhead graphic elements that they use, which are highlighted large here, and then shown in various applications how they can be used, which I think is really great other showing in so many different ways. Then this is another graphic element that is very specific to the brand. It's this usage of type alignment and angles and it gets pretty specific about how that should be used, and the angles and the different percentages that you should be using in terms of spacing. Then here's another do and don't section that I think could be helpful in certain situations. This is an example of a lot of different applications where the color usage is correct. They also have a dome page, but I'm not including them here, so you can check that out in a PDF if you want to get a closer look. This also shows the arrows applied to photography. Then they also have a digital communication section. This is actually how you would set up an e-mail signature, and it gives all these different details about the color and the size and the line spacing that you should be using. They also have some website guidelines. Now, I didn't get into Web guidelines at all, mostly because this is a class that's really focused on a brand identity guideline. But obviously websites are extremely important to brands these days and guidelines are really necessary if you have a larger site that multiple people are going to be working on. Additionally, why I didn't get into them here, is because it requires a whole other set of rules on top of what I've already talked about for identity and can really be a whole set of guidelines on its own. I will include a couple of links in the PDF, if you definitely need to include website guidelines that will give you a little bit of guidance as how to go about doing that though as well. That covers it for all of the content details that we're going to go over. Next up, I'm going to go over the final details to putting together your guide. 9. Final Details: Hey, everyone. Welcome to the final video in class where I'm going to go through all the details you need to know to just get your books polished and finished up. I'm going to take you through a few tips regarding typesetting and buttoning up the design that I think would be helpful just for putting the finishing touches on your guides. Then I'm going to take you through the final Sloan Taylor, guys. You can see how it all came together in the end. Also just give you a little bit of information about file types and how to set those up for your client usage. So let's just dive right in. By now you should have a fully completed style guide with all of your pages designed and all the content included. Before you finish it up completely and send it off to the client, there's a few things that I recommend doing, and the first thing is proofing your content. I spell check twice. I always go through it twice because I tend to rush through it. If not both times, then definitely the first time I rush through it and I always tend to miss one thing here or there. So I think that's important to go through it carefully. Then you also want to read through your content for clarity, make sure everything makes perfect sense and take yourself outside of your design frame of reference for a bit and make sure that all of the instructions you're giving would make sense to someone who isn't quite as familiar with the brand. Then lastly, just make sure you've included all the necessary information. Go back and compare the guide to the original content outline you made and just make sure that you've included every single detail that is necessary. Now basic typesetting. My first job out of college, I ended up working a lot on annual reports. So I learned a lot about typesetting that I definitely did not learn in college. All those little detail that's meticulous and sometimes frustrating as they are to actually execute really help polish a document and make them look super professional in the end. So this class is definitely too short and simple for me to go into it in extreme detail. But I thought that I'd at least go through a few basics to get you started and just provide you with some additional resources in the PDF. So I'm just going to go through five things that I think are the most important typesetting tools that you should use. First, is to find an replace double spaces. There's still a little bit of a debate out there about this. But in the design community across the board, you should only use one space after a sentence. I know we weren't taught that way. I was definitely taught in school to type two spaces after a period. But when it comes to typesetting, that's just incorrect. It allows for a much more pleasant reading experience when you don't have these large blocks of white in-between each sentence that break up your reading pattern. So always make sure there's one and you can just do a very quick find and replace in InDesign to get rid of those. I actually always do that twice as well because you never know sometimes if three space could show up and in that case, doing the final replace once would only take care of one of those spaces and then you'd still be left with the double space. So always go through that twice. The next thing is make sure you're using smart quotes, you definitely do not want to use int marks which you see on the left. Smart quotes on the right are curly quotes. Those are the proper typographic glyph to use. Using those is a very simple setting in your preferences. So look through your preferences in the typographic section and you'll find a checkbox there. Usually that just says Use Smart Quotes. So always make sure that's checked off. I usually go through and just double check, scan the whole text for any instance of quotes and make sure that they're smart quotes and you can change them manually if for some reason that setting isn't applying to all of your glyphs. Thirdly, is to remove any orphans and widows. So if you're not familiar with this, an orphan is a single word or a grouping of two very short words that falls from one column to the next column and lands at the top of the column on its own. Then a widow is also one little word or a couple of very short words that falls at the end of a paragraph. Again, as with the double spaces, this just prevents a very smooth, clean reading experience. This is something you definitely want to avoid and make sure that you're getting rid of them through adjusting the tracking and adjusting the hyphenation, which I will also get to in the next couple of tips to make sure that none of those exist in your content. Now the next thing you want to do is adjust the rag of your text. This might not be necessary if you're not using long paragraphs of text in your guide. If you only have a sentence or two of a description, this isn't something you need to fuss over for a long time, but if you do have extensive copy, this is something you want to make sure you're paying a little bit of attention to. As you can see on the left, this is a incorrect example where the rag is actually making a wave shape on the right side of it. It's very choppy reading when something looks that way. So what you want to aim for is something more like what you see on the right, where you have a very even rhythm of lines of texts and there isn't a distinct shape that's really distracting you and if you squint your eyes, you really get a very consistent great color with all the text. This is also something you want to adjust with tracking and hyphenation. That's something also like I said, that I'm not going to get super into right now, but I'll make sure that you have the resources to learn more about that later on. The last thing you want to do is clean up hyphenation. As you can see on the left, this paragraph has a ton of hyphenation, which often in InDesign is what happens when you use the default settings. So you want to avoid a couple of things here. You want to avoid too many hyphens in a row. You can see as you look down towards the end of the first paragraph, there's three hyphens in a row. It's definitely way too many. I wouldn't even have two in a row, if at all possible. Then the other thing here is you have two of the exact same word hyphenated. That's something you absolutely want to avoid. So this can all be adjusted through the use of tracking and the hyphenation settings. One thing I always use is the single line adjustment as opposed to paragraph. That's something that allows you to really adjust every single line of text on its own in terms of the tracking and spacing so that it doesn't reshuffle the paragraph every time you make an adjustment. I always find that that lends itself to much better results when you're typesetting a paragraph. Then just small design adjustments you want to go through and make. Just turn on your grid lines and make sure everything is aligned properly, that everything is consistent from page to page in terms of where it falls on the grid lines. Clean up your colors. As you can see in this palette example, this is before they're entirely cleaned up. I have some PMS colors and then I have some CMYK colors that are named inconsistently. You want to make sure that, number 1, you don't have any colors in your palette that aren't being used, which is a really quick fix in the swatches flyout menu. You can just select all in use and then delete them from there. Then you also want to just rename everything, said that they're consistent and that it's just very easy to look at. Then you also want to clean up your style sheets, which is something you should be using it throughout the layout, if you are using a lot of text. I didn't get very much into style sheets earlier because again, that's a whole other topic that would require some more time. I will provide resources to info about style sheets. But generally you should be using those as much as possible because what that allows you to do is take one style, for example, this body copy that you can see on the left side of my guide, and just quickly apply that to any other instance of that body copy throughout the book. Then if you want to make a change to that style, say change the type size or the letting. Then all you have to do is go into that style sheet and make the adjustment there, and it will apply to everything that's applied to. That's cleaning up the style sheets, you just want to make sure that there isn't anything that isn't being used in the palette, and that everything is applied consistently in the same way. You just want a button it up and make sure that it's very clean. Now I'm just going to flip through the final Sloan Taylor style guide just so you can see how that came together really quickly. We're going to look at it in spreads so that you can see how each page connects to the next. So cover and then we have the inside front cover, and the table of contents, where it's broken down into sections. The brand essence section. I included the mood board here because it is a very high level piece of visual content. Then the tone of voice section, which is very short and sweet. Then the brand elements section, which is the bulk of the content here. We're starting with logo usage, color palette, typography. We have the white space, pattern, then illustration. Then I have the usage examples in its own separate section. I've split print here because the intention was always that there would be a web component that would be added later on down the line. Then here you can just see all the applications; different stationery applications, all alongside each other. Then we have the inside back cover and that facing page. What I usually do there in all of my guides is have contact information. This gives the opportunity to include both the contact as the brand itself and then also the design studio contact, so that anyone using the guide has multiple channels to get their questions answered. Then we have the back cover and that is it. Quickly before I go, I just want to talk very briefly about file formats because one of the other things that goes alongside with sending off a style guide is sending off the final artwork. I just want to give you an overview of how I do that. Generally, these are the four file formats I am tackling or working with. EPS files, JPEGs, PDFs, and PNG files. An EPS file is what I use for anything vector-based. All of the logos, any pattern swatches that need to be used, any other vector-based graphic elements. I usually also include JPEGs of logos and things like that. This tends to be helpful if you're using a PowerPoint or anything like that, that's going to be seen on screen. I've found through experimentation of using those type of applications that high-res JPEGs work really well in something like a PowerPoint that also needs to be printed out. I don't always include PDF files, but sometimes people ask for those in addition to EPS files. I make those through Illustrator so they're also vector-based, but they're viewable on any machine in a lot of different applications where an EPS file is really openable in Illustrator, if you want to still edit the vectors. Then PNG files I use on the web. You can have transparency in these files as opposed to a JPEG, which is really helpful. This is generally how the structure of my folders that I send work. I send one zipped folder that has a whole structure of folders within it. Generally I'll have the main folder with the final artwork. Then for this particular brand that I'm showing you, the two main things that I was sending of logos and patterns. This logo had several different options, it had a primary logo, a secondary mark, and stacked option. Within those three folders, I also have a folder for print and screen. That's how I separate the different formats. This person asks for AI files as opposed to EPS, which is an easy fix. So I just saved them as AI files instead and included them in here. As you can see, I just saved the different options with their color name labeled at the end. That's how I distinguish them. You can see in here I have a black CMYK, both PMS coded, and uncoded on RGB and white. Those are all the different color options that apply to that specific logo. Then the same color options aside from the PMS and CMYK options, would just be translated to screen. Then I do the same thing for the secondary marks and the stacked marks. Then for patterns, it's really also the same type of approach. I generally start with vector-based files for the patterns swatches which I make in Illustrator. That's generally what I want to recommend for people to be using across the board anyway. But I also do include both high-res and low-res digital files for screen, so that if someone wanted to use them in a PowerPoint presentation or something to that effect that they could do it. Then this is how I organize everything. It's very structured and hierarchical. Like I said, I just zip the folder and send this off with the guide and this is usually pretty sufficient. That's it for how to create a style guide. I hope you guys enjoy this and got something out of it. I'm really looking forward to seeing your work. Thanks. Hey everyone. I just like to take a minute to introduce the official sponsor of this class, Squarespace. Now that you've completed your brand identity project, one of the logical next steps will be putting it into place on a website. Not all of us are skilled in web design or have access to a developer. In that case, Squarespace is really an excellent option. Squarespace provides an all-in-one platform to create a website quickly and easily with professional-looking responsive templates to choose from and 24-7 or support through live chat and e-mail. You can give Squarespace a try by signing up for a trials, no credit card required and get started right right. What's even better is that as a student of this class, you can get 10% off when you sign up. Simply go to the URL you see on your screen, squarespace.com/courtney, enter offer code skill6. Thanks so much for supporting this class and thanks again to Squarespace. A better web starts with your website.