Style guide creation services
Craft the heart of your brand, consistently.
The need for a brand style guide
Without clear rules for tone, terminology, and formatting, the same brand can sound like five different companies across five different markets. A style guide exists to prevent that, giving every translator, copywriter, and market team the same blueprint to work from.
The world is large and diverse. In order for your brand to stand out, you need to have consistent communication that your audience can build on – both nationally and internationally. However, the more you grow, the harder it becomes to maintain this consistency, especially when you’re active in several countries.
So how do you ensure consistency across languages and cultures? The answer is to create a style guide.
The key to consistency
A style guide is a blueprint for your brand communication. It lays out the fundamentals about how you get your message across. This may involve agreements on specific elements , such as date and currency notation or the use of capital letters and punctuation in enumerations. It also includes guidelines on the tone of voice and forms of address you use for your target audience.
To ensure consistency, Attached creates a style guide that captures all the elements of your communication. Whether you need a simple one-pager or a comprehensive manual, we’re here to support you.
How Attached helps you
We don’t just hand you a generic template. We build a style guide around how your brand actually communicates, so it becomes a document your teams and translators genuinely use, not one that sits unopened.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- Brand discovery means we start by understanding your existing communication, tone, and target audience, rather than starting from a blank page.
- Tailored scope means whether you need a simple one-pager or a comprehensive manual, we scale the guide to what your organisation actually needs.
- Multilingual application means the guide is built to work across languages and markets, not just in your source language.
- Practical, usable format means the guide is structured so translators, copywriters, and internal teams can apply it directly, without needing to interpret vague guidance.
And a single point of contact, your Attached project manager, coordinates the process from discovery to final delivery.
Boost your brand with Attached
Our team of translation experts has in-depth knowledge of many cultures and languages. This positions us well to create a unique style guide that fits your target audience. We ensure that your brand stands out in every market where your company operates in your customers’ own language. And best of all? You maintain control of your message with the assurance that it’s conveyed consistently.
What's included in a style guide
A style guide from Attached typically covers tone of voice and personality, so your brand sounds the same whether it’s formal, playful, or somewhere in between. It sets out forms of address, such as formal or informal register, and how these shift across languages and cultures. It defines formatting conventions, including date and currency notation, capitalisation, and punctuation in lists. It also establishes terminology preferences, covering preferred and prohibited terms, and captures market-specific nuances, noting where tone or phrasing should adapt for particular regions or audiences.
If your organisation needs a lighter-touch version, we can also produce a condensed one-pager covering the essentials.
How the style guide process works
Creating a style guide with Attached is a simple, guided process:
- You share existing brand materials, such as your website, marketing content, or any prior guidelines.
- We review your current communication and discuss your target audience and markets with you.
- A specialist drafts the style guide, covering tone, terminology, and formatting. You review the draft and share feedback, and we refine it accordingly.
- Delivery follows, giving you a finished style guide ready to share with your teams and translation partners.
Your Attached project manager remains your single point of contact throughout, so you always know where things stand.
Why choose Attached
- Tailored solutions perfectly aligned with your specific needs and goals.
- A comprehensive service package to support your international growth and communication from A to Z.
- A dedicated team always ready to assist you, combining AI-powered tools with human expertise.
Questions & Answers
Do I need a full style guide, or would a shorter version work?
It depends on your size and complexity. A short one-pager can cover the essentials, such as tone of voice and key formatting rules, and works well for smaller brands or a single market. A comprehensive manual suits organisations operating across many markets or languages, where more detailed guidance prevents inconsistency. We help you decide which fits your needs before we start.
Can a style guide be applied across multiple languages?
Yes. That’s the core purpose of the service. We build style guides so that tone, terminology, and formatting principles translate consistently across languages, while allowing for the cultural and linguistic adjustments each market genuinely needs.
Do you use our existing brand materials, or start from scratch?
We start with whatever you already have, such as a website, marketing content, or brand guidelines, and build from there. This ensures the style guide reflects how your brand already communicates, rather than introducing a generic set of rules that doesn’t match your existing voice.
Who uses the style guide once it's created?
Your style guide is designed to be used by anyone producing content on your brand’s behalf, including internal marketing and communications teams, external copywriters, and translation partners such as Attached. It becomes the shared reference point that keeps everyone aligned, wherever your content is created.
How long does it take to create a style guide?
Timelines depend on the scope, whether you need a concise one-pager or a comprehensive manual, and how much existing brand material we have to work from. We provide a realistic timeline once we understand your requirements during the initial consultation.