My Style-Guide-from-Scratch Checklist

Written By Derin Kıvaner

You don’t need 30 brand pages to look professional.

You just need one page of decisions you actually use.

If you're rebuilding your brand or starting fresh this year, don’t waste energy trying to “get it all right.”

Start with what actually matters:

One Page. Five Decisions. Done.

A functional style guide isn't about details. It's about alignment.

My checklist includes just these:

  1. Primary brand color (HEX code, no maybes)

  2. Font pairing (headline + body)

  3. Image vibe (light, dark, clean, dreamy… pick one)

  4. Voice tone (3 adjectives max)

  5. Usage rules (like: no drop shadows, no script fonts on titles)

Make these 5 decisions and you’ve got a brand identity.

Everything else? Extra.

My Own Before/After Moment

I looked back at some of my old brand assets. And yikes.

Mismatched colors. Four different font energies. My captions sounded like five people were writing them.

Once I followed this checklist and built a one-pager I actually used?

Everything clicked.

My content looked cohesive. My templates got easier to build.

I felt more me—visually and vocally.

That's what a one-page guide actually does. It removes the micro-decisions you're making every single time you open Canva or write a caption. When the decisions are already made, you stop second-guessing. You just make the thing.

What to do next:

  1. Open a blank doc right now. Write the five items: primary HEX, font pair, image vibe, three voice adjectives, two usage rules. That's the whole guide.

  2. Print it or pin it. It has to be somewhere you can see it without opening another tab. A note on your desktop works. A sticky note works. A buried Google Doc does not.

  3. Apply it to one existing asset this week. A social template, your email signature, your website header. One thing. That's the test.

You don't need to get it perfect. You need to get it written.

Working through your own brand right now and not sure what you're missing? I do free 20-minute brand audits. I'll look at what you have and tell you exactly what I see. Book yours at [link].

Derin

Derin Kıvaner