When you're trying to establish an online presence or an online business, it's important that you create a cohesive set of visual elements that you're going to use consistently so that your potential followers or potential clients start to recognize you by the look and feel and Vibe of your content. These visual elements will help you stand out from other creators in your niche and they'll also help you become more memorable. And so to organize these visual elements you need to have a brand guide brand guides are essentially a quick set of rules and guidelines about how to use your various visual elements, including your colors your fonts when and how to use your logo Etc in this video. I'm gonna walk you through creating your own brand guide so that you can keep your Instagram cohesive and consistent and you can become memorable in the minds of your future audience.

You can follow along the steps in this video using the brand guide template from the course workbook. So make sure that you pull that up and then fill out your own brand guide as I talk you through it the first thing that you're going to want to include at the beginning of your brand guide is a killer brand backstory brand stories wrap up a company or a Brand's Mission their Vision their purpose and their connection to their target audience. It's nice to include this at the beginning of your brand guide so that you can kind of remind yourself of why you're here when you're creating your content or when you're referencing those visual elements and it's also a really helpful tool. If you ever bring on people to your team whether that is like full-time team members or contractors, you can give them this as a resource. So they also know the story behind the brand that they're working on content for.

Okay, so once you've got your Brand Story written down the next important thing is your logo every good brand guide is gonna include instructions on when and how to use a logo including acceptable color variation and examples of how not to include Logo, I know this might sound really extra especially if you're just a solo Creator right now to literally lay out all the possible ways to incorrectly display your logo, but trust me. It's so helpful to have this even as an exercise just for you to work through to think about. So yeah, what are ways that I wouldn't want to use this like what feels tacky to me what feels off you can kind of establish that from the beginning. So then you know that you're gonna have a consistent way that you're using your logo in your content moving forward. Oh yeah, and it goes without saying that at this point it would be good for you to have a logo if you are a business brand if you're personal brand having your face be your profile picture and essentially your logo is just fine. If you are a business brand then of course, you can DIY a logo or you can hire a designer to help you with it, depending on your budget and the stage of your journey that you're at.

So in this brand guide, you're also going to want to include your core color palette in the past. I feel like it was more common for Brands to have really simple color. Pellets like literally just one or two colors but times are changing and especially with the variety of content that you're going to be developing for Instagram. I think it's ideal to have a palette of maybe like five to ten colors. I think it can be good to have five main colors and then the next five are essentially lighter or darker shades of your original five. So you've got that variation to play with but it's still cohesive your brand guys should include obviously all of these colors and the hex codes for them. So you can really easily get those exact shades when you're switching between design software and you might even want to include some notes on when to use each color and when not to use each color next up you want to include some information about typography or the fonts that you're going to be using for your brand in general. I think it's good to have two to three fonts that you're using all the time. You might want to have a display font a title font and a body font. So basically one that sort of And fun one that you can use on your major headings and then one that you use for like your standard paragraphs. Then you have three fonts to work with so it doesn't feel too repetitive. But it also stays consistent. So include those fonts in your brand guide with a little descriptor of when those fonts are meant to be used.

Lastly, I recommend including some guidelines for General imagery including photos illustrations graphs and charts. This is also a good place in your brand guide to include the style of stock photography that you normally use or the style of infographics that you've made in the past. It's good to have some examples here like almost like a mini mood board of what the visuals for your brand are gonna look like and again, I know this might all seem very formal and official when you're creating on your own, but it is a really good exercise even just to determine for yourself what your style is going to be and putting it in place now means that if you ever were to get help with your account, you've got this perfect PDF already designed with instructions of how to represent your brand well online. So take some time to work through creating your Brand guide using the template that I provided in the course workbook and then meet me over in the next video where we're going to talk about more of the nuts and bolts of setting up your Instagram account for success.