11th Grade — Client Project: Brand Style Guide

⏰ Do Now — Start Here

Think of a brand you'd recognize from just its colors, with no logo or words visible at all. What is it?

🎯 Today's Big Question

How do we document a consistent brand identity so anyone can apply it correctly?

📈 By the End of Today, You Will Be Able To

Build a one-page style guide documenting a logo, color palette (with exact color codes), and type pairing from the Logo Design project.
Apply the brand consistently across at least 2 mock applications (e.g. a business card and a social media graphic).
Explain why a style guide matters when more than one person works on a brand.

🧰 What You'll Need

Computer with Figma or Photoshop
Finished logo from the previous project

📋 Your Plan for Today

Day 1: 1

Plan: students pull exact color codes and font names from their finished logo project and lay out a one-page style guide structure.

Day 2: 2

Build: students complete the style guide (logo usage rules, color palette with codes, type pairing) in Figma or Photoshop.

Day 3: 3

Apply & critique: students apply their brand to 2 mock applications, then swap with a partner and use "I notice / I wonder" to check for consistency errors.

🖥️ Today's Slide Deck

Short, on-the-board pacing slides — project these to follow along. (The full details are in the handout above, not here.)

📚 Key Words

Style Guide / Brand Guidelines: A reference document defining exactly how a brand's logo, colors, and type should be used.
Color Code (Hex/CMYK): The exact numeric value of a brand color, ensuring it looks identical everywhere it's used.
Brand Consistency: Using the same visual identity correctly across every application, so a brand is instantly recognizable.

✅ What Your Finished Work Should Include

Style guide + mock applications scored with a rubric: exact color codes documented, consistent application across both mockups.

Exit Ticket: Name one specific rule from your style guide that keeps your brand looking consistent.

📊 Before You Leave

Quick, anonymous class check-in -- takes less than a minute.

Class Check-In

📁 Portfolio Update — Once a Week

Once a week (e.g. every Friday, or your class's last meeting of the week), add your best finished or in-progress work to a running portfolio folder with a 1-2 sentence caption: what it is, what skill or standard it shows. This becomes your formal Google Sites portfolio in Unit F -- keep it current all year so you're not scrambling right before your PBAT and portfolio review.

✍️ Example description for your Google Sites portfolio (fill in YOUR blanks -- don't just copy this):

For this piece, I made ______________ (name what you made) for “Client Project: Brand Style Guide.” This project asked: “How do we document a consistent brand identity so anyone can apply it correctly?” I used Style Guide / Brand Guidelines by ______________ (explain how you used it in THIS piece). The hardest part was ______________, and I solved it by ______________. I'm proud of ______________ because ______________.

🎓 ACP Exam Prep

This lesson connects to the Photoshop Adobe Certified Professional exam: Domain 2: Project Setup and Interface · Domain 4: Creating and Modifying Visual Elements

🔗 Want to Learn More?

Figma — Style Guides 101

🚀 The Extra Mile

Cross-Class Connection: A direct Business class exercise in defining consistent brand standards for a company.

Career Connection: A style guide is a literal deliverable named on the Fashion Design career page's project list.

Go further -- turn this into a portfolio piece:

Build a style guide for a real club or small business, thorough enough that someone else could actually apply it consistently. Start here: lock in the exact hex code for your primary color and the name of your primary typeface first — those two decisions anchor everything else in the guide.
Apply your own style guide to three different real applications (a shirt, a flyer, a social post) to prove it actually works. Start here: apply it to the shirt first, since it has the fewest size constraints, before moving to the flyer and social post.