Brand Style Guides: Why You Need Them & How to Create Them

If you’re an apartment marketer, are you taking the necessary steps to ensure that your brand identity is consistent?

Not only does proper branding help differentiate your communities but it also builds customer loyalty by making your company and communities identifiable and memorable and, hopefully, encouraging prospective renters to choose your communities because they represent a brand they know and trust.

One of the best ways to achieve that is with a brand style guide. A BSG is like a marketing and branding blueprint for your communities. It’s a guide for marketers, on-site staff and vendors—anyone who will prepare content, advertising, marketing collateral or signage for the community. A BSG contains, at a minimum, logos, fonts, colors and examples of proper usage to ensure consistency in the marketing message and to make the company’s brand instantly recognizable.

“A BSG is the backbone of a property,” said Kristen White, marketing manager for Gates Hudson. “People may think that’s dramatic, but it’s true. It holds the store together in terms of how you talk about or show the story of your property in a way that people can connect to it.”

A BSG is the backbone of a property. People may think that’s dramatic, but it’s true. It holds the store together in terms of how you talk about or show the story of your property in a way that people can connect to it.

—Kristen White, marketing manager for Gates Hudson

Louie Colella, vice president of leasing and operations for CRG in Chicago, said that any apartment marketer with a large portfolio—100 units or more—should have a BSG, although mom-and-pop landlords can benefit as well. But Christine Gustafson, vice president of marketing and public relations of The Breeden Co., said that everyone should create and use a BSG. Smaller landlords with limited budgets can prepare one simply by searching online for “brand guide,” she said, and they can use that template as a starting point to create a one- or two-page guide.

Apartment industry marketers tout the advantages of BSGs and say the guidelines are not overly limiting. “Brand style guides create structure without limitations,” said Colella. “My interpretation of the guide may be different than yours, but it doesn’t limit creativity—it just creates a consistent foundation.”
But there are situations where users of a BSG need the freedom to vary from its specific guidelines.
“People don’t always think of how the BSG is implemented,” said White. “But when you’re translating colors in the guide to clothing, for example, you might need to tweak the colors to get the right match. So, you need flexibility for that.”

White said that when she ordered indigo-colored shirts for a community whose BSG included that color in the palette, the finished products looked black instead. And when she hired an artist to create a mural, the colors needed adjustment as well. “Colors on a concrete wall that faces the sun are going to fade over time,” she said. “So, the artist had to take the color palette and go darker so that when it faded, it would still look great.”

What Should a BSG Include?

Brand style guides can be as simple or as complex as you’d like. A one- or two-page document can lay out the logos, approved colors and typography, but a longer document—some exceed 20 pages – will often go into more detail and include examples of how to properly use logos and fonts on the website, for business cards or letterhead.

The BSG should, at a minimum, include a community’s colors, fonts and logo, all of which will be used by project stakeholders for social media posts, event flyers, brochures, interior and exterior building colors or marketing collateral. That way, everyone is literally operating from the same page, and all internal and external communications will be consistent.

We want our on-site teams to be empowered to create content, but we want it to look the same consistently. That’s why we create the BSG, to let everybody know this is the look, the font, the colors and give it as a guide to the people who work on site.

—Lisa Gunderson, vice president of asset management for Bristol Development Group

Some marketers include more information, such as the brand story or mission, guidelines about photograph usage or Fair Housing dos and don’ts.

CRG’s Colella includes details about the brand voice—the guidelines that define how a brand communicates or presents itself to the world. Brand voice guidelines incorporate the tone, language and personality of the brand. For example, for CRG’s Chapter Eugene, a student housing community at the University of Oregon, the company wanted to position the community as more than just a residence. “It’s portrayed as a launchpad for students’ personal and academic journeys,” said Colella. “Phrases like ‘we offer a stage for your college odyssey’ and ‘excel academically, socialize freely, explore boldly and elevate your ambitions’ underscore this aspirational tone.”

Preparing the BSG

The BSG for new-construction apartments should be prepared early in the development process. By the time a developer is seeking developmental approvals, the BSG should be complete.

“Developers come to us to help name the property and bring it to life, so when they’re out fundraising or going to planning board meetings, there’s a vision for the community,” said Tammy Casserly, senior vice president of growth and brand development for Resident360, a multifamily branding and marketing agency. “Sometimes, we can be two years ahead of the actual schedule for the build.”

Many apartment marketers prepare the BSG in-house with the assistance of a graphic designer or printer. Others retain third-party companies. Colella said he typically starts the process in-house by first achieving clarity on the brand’s positioning. Then, to transfer that vision into the final document, he brings in a third party to implement the ideas into the visual and verbal standards that will be set forth in the BSG.

Starting from scratch, Colella said the development of the BSG can take three months. If the brand vision is already established, and he just needs the BSG developed, he said it takes less time—about two to four weeks. The cost when a third-party company is involved ranges from $1,500 to $20,000, Colella said.
Breeden’s Gustafson said she prepares BSGs with the assistance of a commercial printer. She said that community BSGs are typically one page, but the BSG for the multifamily division of The Breeden Co. is 23 pages.

When she recently prepared the BSG for Lake Taylor Pointe, a luxury apartment community in Norfolk, Va., Gustafson created a duck logo and used muted colors to encourage a relaxed feeling so that residents and prospects would feel at home. The community is near a highway and airport, and it’s surrounded by older homes, she said, presenting a challenge when marketing it. “It’s a difficult area to make appealing, but I wanted to make people want to live there,” she said. “I wanted them to feel like they were on vacation every day.”

Brand style guides create structure without creating limitations. My interpretation of the guide may be different than yours, but it’s within the realm of structure. It doesn’t limit creativity—it just creates a consistent foundation.

—Louie Colella, vice president of leasing and operations for CRG

Lisa Gunderson, vice president of asset management for Bristol Development Group in Franklin, Tenn., is passionate about brand style guides. For the company’s Jewel at Santa Rosa Beach community on the Florida Panhandle, Gunderson said she incorporated jewel tones into the color palette to reflect the nickname of the area, the Emerald Coast. She also wanted to differentiate the apartments from others in the area, so she opted for a vibrant color palette. The strategy has been successful. Since having its grand opening in April 2025, Bristol has been signing eight to 10 new residents each week at rents starting from $1,600.

Gunderson said that it’s not only important to have a BSG; it’s key to keep it up to date. “That’s a real opportunity to distinguish yourself in the market, to make a positive change and speak to new consumers,” she said.

White agrees. “Update your brand every few years so it stays relevant,” she said. “That way, you won’t be looking at signs and a brand from the 1970s.”

Read the August 2025 issue of MHN.