5 Simple Steps for Creating a Custom Style Guide

If you’re marketing anything — a book, a product, a business, whatever — you’re likely creating marketing materials all the time. You’re creating images for your blog or social media, email content, ads, flyers, business cards, etc. Creating a simple style guide can help drastically reduce the amount of time you’re spending on all of those things.

With this one-page Style Guide Template, you can easily put together your own custom guide in under an hour. Then, save it in a handy location on your computer and/or print it out and keep it nearby on or around your desk so you can reference it whenever you’re working on new marketing images or collateral. I create one for each of my clients, and I reference them almost daily.

Here are 5 simple steps for creating your own custom style guide:

  1. Download the free Style Guide Template:

  1. Update your business name (at the top and bottom) and insert your logo(s) into the template. If you don’t have a logo, you can use Canva [affiliate link] to create one in just minutes.
  1. Choose your color palette. There’s a fabulous free website (https://coolors.co) where you can upload your logo and then generate a color palette using the colors in the logo and adding in complementary colors. The Coolors palette includes 5 colors. You can “lock” any of the colors you like and then continue to generate new colors until you find the combination you like best. Once you’ve determined your color palette, swap out the colors and corresponding Hex codes (6 digit number/letter series) in the template.
  1. Select and enter the primary fonts you want to use in your headlines, graphics, and communications.
  1. Create some sample images using your colors and fonts. Again, you can use Canva to create beautiful graphics in minutes. Insert your samples images into the template.

Save the template somewhere you’ll be able to access it easily whenever you’re working on any marketing materials for your brand.

Here’s how the Style Guide looks:

Style Guide Template

Published by Kelly Schuknecht

Kelly Schuknecht is a marketer with a background in the publishing industry. She is passionate about all things related to books and loves helping authors navigate the world of social media for book promotion. She recently launched the course Marketing Your Book on TikTok.

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