Brand guidelines: what to include, how to structure them and how to keep them alive

What brand guidelines are for

Brand guidelines are the operating manual of a brand. They explain who you are, how you sound and how you look, and they show through examples how that works in practice. Different firms call the document a brand book, brand guide, brand manual or style guide; the purpose is the same.

That purpose is simple: everyone who produces something for the brand should make the same choices without needing to ask. That includes your own team, but also the web developer, the copywriter, the photographer, the printer, the agency running your social channels and the marketing manager you hire next year. Without guidelines, each fills the gaps with their own taste. A few years later you have three versions of the logo, five shades of navy and a website that sounds nothing like your proposals.

Guidelines are the last step of a branding process rather than the first. They record decisions; they cannot make them. If the underlying choices about who you serve and why you are different have never been made, the document will be a set of rules without reasons.

Brand book, style guide or design system?

The terms overlap in everyday use. This overview helps you decide what you actually need. Most small and mid-sized firms need a brand book with a strong visual section; a full design system only earns its cost when several digital products or a large team are involved.

What brand guidelines should include

Complete guidelines have five parts. The first is the most important and the one most often skipped.

1. Brand foundations

Why the company exists, whom it serves and what it promises. This is where your brand positioning, brand promise, values and personality are written down, briefly and concretely. A value such as "quality" says nothing until you explain what it makes you do and refuse to do. The foundations come from your brand strategy.

2. Verbal identity

• tone of voice: three or four traits and what each means in practice;
• examples of on-brand and off-brand phrasing;
• house style: British spelling, capitalisation, numbers, abbreviations, jargon to avoid;
• fixed wording: company name, strapline, a one-line and a one-paragraph description.

3. Visual identity

• logo: versions, clear space, minimum size, light and dark backgrounds, and examples of misuse;
• colour: values for screen (HEX, RGB) and print (CMYK, and Pantone where used), plus the proportions in which colours appear;
• typography: typefaces, hierarchy, spacing and a system font fallback;
• imagery: photography, illustration and icon style, with examples;
• grid, shapes and layout principles.

Our brand identity page explains how these elements are developed in the first place.

4. Applications

Show the identity in use: a website page, a proposal, a presentation, an email signature, social posts, signage or vehicle livery. Examples are the most valuable part of any guidelines, because people copy examples far more readily than they read rules.

5. Governance and assets

Who owns the guidelines, where the files live, how to request an exception and when the document is reviewed.

Example: a contents page for a brand book

Search for brand guidelines examples and you mostly find global brands with documents running to a hundred pages. A UK professional services firm with fifteen to fifty people rarely needs that. The outline below is an illustration, not a client case.

1. Welcome and how to use this guide. One page.
2. Our brand in brief. Purpose, positioning, promise and three values with explanations. Two to three pages.
3. How we sound. Tone of voice, house style, sample sentences. Two to four pages.
4. Logo. Versions, clear space, sizes, misuse. Two pages.
5. Colour and typography. Palette with values, typefaces, hierarchy. Two pages.
6. Imagery. Photography, icons and illustration with examples. Two pages.
7. Digital. Accessible colour pairings, buttons, forms, social formats. Two to three pages.
8. Applications. Proposal, presentation, email signature, signage. Three to five pages.
9. Files and contacts. Where to download assets and whom to ask. One page.

That comes to roughly twenty to thirty pages. A sole trader can manage with a handful; a group with several locations or sub-brands needs more.

Digital brand guidelines or a PDF?

A PDF is quick to produce and easy to share. Its weakness is versioning: several copies circulate and nobody knows which is current. Online guidelines, on a password-protected page or brand portal, have one live version and can offer logos and templates for download in the same place.

• PDF suits a small firm with a stable identity and few people producing material. Put a version number and date on the cover.
• Online guidelines suit growing teams, several external suppliers and brands that produce new material often. Change it once and everyone sees the change.
• Both: an online source of truth with a PDF export for those who need one.

Guidelines for the web

Screens bring requirements that print does not. Text and background colours need enough contrast to be readable; the W3C explains the minimum contrast criterion in its WCAG 2.2 guidance on contrast. Record in your guidelines which colour combinations are allowed for text, how links and buttons look in every state, and how web fonts load. A brand colour that fails contrast on white should be reserved for large elements. Our page on accessible web design covers the wider picture.

Also check font licences. A typeface licensed for print is not always licensed for web or app use; list the licences you hold.

How to create brand guidelines in six steps

1. Audit what exists. Gather your website, proposals, social posts, presentations and print. The inconsistencies become obvious within minutes.
2. Write down the foundations. Positioning, promise, values and personality. If these are unclear, settle them first; guidelines cannot record choices that were never made.
3. Set the rules. Develop the verbal and visual identity. A few clear rules beat many vague ones.
4. Design the examples. Produce the applications you use most often. These will do most of the work.
5. Test with real users. Ask a colleague and an outside supplier to produce something using the draft. Wherever they hesitate or guess, something is missing.
6. Launch and explain. Walk the team through it rather than emailing a file. Provide templates for documents and slides so that the right way is also the easiest way.

If you do not yet have a developed identity, guidelines and identity are best created together. When the change is substantial, a rebrand may be the honest starting point.

Governance: keeping guidelines in use

Most brand guidelines fail after they are made, not while they are made. They are shared once and disappear into a shared drive. Good governance prevents that.

• One owner who answers questions, judges exceptions and makes changes. In a small firm that is often the managing director or marketing lead.
• Version control: a number and date for each version and a short note of what changed.
• One place for assets: logos, fonts, templates and the guidelines themselves, accessible to everyone who needs them, not in someone’s inbox.
• Onboarding: new staff and new suppliers receive the guidelines on day one, with a short walkthrough.
• An annual review to check that the guidelines still match how the firm works and communicates.
• A route for exceptions. Guidelines that forbid everything get ignored; explain how to request a deviation.

Common mistakes with brand guidelines

• Only logo rules. The logo is rarely what goes wrong. Tone, imagery and layout go wrong far more often.
• No foundations. Rules without reasons feel arbitrary and are quietly ignored.
• Too long. Nobody reads eighty pages. Start compact and expand where questions arise.
• Designed for print only. A logo that becomes illegible at small sizes or colours that fail contrast cause problems online straight away.
• No examples. People imitate; show them what good looks like.
• No templates. If the right way takes more effort than the wrong way, the wrong way wins.
• Never updated. Guidelines that no longer match practice lose their authority.

For how positioning, identity and design fit together in a full project, see our branding agency page.