I bet that title got you a bit interested. What will help you be more productive?

Whether you want create graphics for a blog post, or if you’ve hired a designer to create an ebook, you want to have all of your brand information put together. You (or your designer) need to know what exact colors to use, the correct font and any other small details to your brand. Your brand is in the details!! If you’ve got one image that’s got slightly altered colors or the wrong font, it will be noticeable. And if you’ve got different fonts and colors all over the place on your website or social media, it will just look sloppy and like you don’t have it all together. And no one wants that! A Style Sheet will fix all of these problems. It’s like leaving a list of all of that “just in case” information for your kid’s babysitter. They need to know if your kids eat a bedtime snack (or if they’re just trying to take advantage of the fact that that sweet 16 year old you hired doesn’t know anything and want to get a sugar filled ice cream sandwich out of it). Just like a babysitter, your designer needs to know the confines and details of your brand.

Since I’ve been working on my website, it’s made an extremely time consuming job and stressful task into less (but still very) time consuming job. And much less stressful. I don’t have to make new decisions on each page what colors and fonts I’m using. I know. I’m using hex color #ed263b (that’s right, I’ve used it so much I’ve got it memorized) as my primary color and have a few others to support. I also know on each graphic I’m most likely including a colored background with a black or white pattern on the top of it. It makes creating my graphics easy schmesy!

If you didn’t have your brand professionally designed (or your designer just didn’t give you a style sheet) you can create your own very simply. Open a fresh document and stick your logo at the top. Then create boxes filled with your brand colors. Include the hex numbers for each color (or alternatively you can include CMYK colors, RGB colors or PMS colors, but I find hex numbers easiest). Next, Type out the fonts you use for your brand. Note any special ways you use your text. Do you bold it, or italicize it? Do you space out the lettering (called tracking)? Anything else? Is there a particular font you use for headings and another one for body text?

Bonus! It keeps your brand consistent across all graphics, websites and printables. And we all know how important consistent brand is. (And if you don’t, read about it here)