Designing a Brand Style Guide for Booksie: Case Study
Over the past 4 weeks, I’ve been working closely with the founder of a new, books club called Booksie in Ghana. It has been an amazing project to have been involved in and I thought it would be a good idea to do a case study of my experience and process of working with Booksie.
The company and product
Booksie is a book company on a mission to empower young African readers by giving them access to books with characters who look like them while giving African authors the opportunity to sell their books.
Booksie’s flagship product, My Booksie Box is a subscription-based book delivery service that curates high-quality books written by African authors for children between the ages of 3–12 years and delivers it to their doorsteps regularly. Parents and guardians can choose to receive books either monthly, bi-monthly or quarterly.
I was approached by the founder and we began discussing what the project was all about; what the goal was; and had a high-level discussion on his vision for the visual direction of Booksie. After our meetings, it’s safe to say I was hooked and wanted to be a part of the project.
Being able to design a product that was going to bring such a massive impact to African kids was an inspiration for me. Another motivational factor was the founder’s passion for wanting to make this company a success. This was her baby and I wanted nothing but success for her.
An important factor to note, and something that really got me excited, was how much she( the founder) cares about design. Design is now at the forefront of all companies, big and small, and there’s an increasing prioritization of design, so I was delighted to be put in a position where I could help drive it.
Project goals & objectives
The main goals and objectives for this project were:
- Get customers instantly engaged with the brand.
- Create a simple brand style guide that contains all the components that the company will use for their visuals.
- Progress the visual identity, create a design language and create a component library.
Booksie personality
There were three key personalities of Booksie that I wanted to be at the forefront of my design:
- Playful
- Cool and creative
- Inspiring
Key principles
Keeping these key booksie qualities at the forefront of the design, I needed to make sure I was sticking to the core brand style guide principles throughout the process:(Note that I only picked four principles on the style guide for the purpose of the case study)
- Color palette
- Typography
- Brand tone of voice
- Imagery
Colors
The Booksie color palette enhances the brand personality and visually distinguishes Booksie from other brands.
Booksie’s branding is totally fitting with the company ethos. It’s fresh, and it evokes happiness, playfulness and creativity. I progressed the branding focusing on the colors that aligned to Booksie’s key qualities:
Sunny,Veggie, Indian ocean and pinky are just some of the colors which are part of the Booksie palette.
Typography
The use of a key selection of fonts for the Booksie brand helps all Booksie branded collateral have a consistent look and feel.
I included three Google’s fonts in the branding one for the headings( Montserrat) one for the paragraph(Muli) and one emergency font(calibri) which was to be used in cases where the previous fonts are not available, such as in shared electronic media. It is also important to include the usage of the fonts e.g the optical size of each font plus the body size. Also make sure that all fonts have cross browser compatibility. There was font variation to choose from in the branding, including Thin, Light, Regular, Medium and Bold.
Tone of voice
It is not only the visual identity of the Booksie brand which impacts the way the brand is perceived; how Booksie says things is also important.
I wanted the tone of voice in the designs to match the product so I came up with 5(of course with the help of the founder); confident, direct, dynamic, positive and trustworthy. By using friendly, welcoming messaging (and some emojis here and there Lol), we can bring the Booksie key qualities into the design which helps the customer understand and enjoy the product more.
Imagery
I dived Booksie’s imagery into four parts:
-Illustrations
-Iconography
-Photography
-Campaign assets
Conclusion
Having a style guide in place brings clarity and consistency to what’s being built. It also guide’s you in designing and producing high quality documents. The strict application of brand guidelines will ensure brand consistency of the highest standard, all of which will benefit your organisation and its members as a whole.
You wanna take a look at the whole style guide document for Booksie? Lets chat :-) lavetadhis@gmail.com
