What brand guidelines should contain, and what nobody reads

Most brand guidelines are written once, admired briefly and then ignored. The document is too long, too abstract or simply impossible to find when someone needs a logo file in a hurry. Good guidelines are a working tool: they let a designer, a developer, a printer or a new marketing hire produce something correct without asking anyone. This article covers what belongs in them, what can be cut, and how to present the result so that people use it.

What are brand guidelines for?

Their job is consistency without supervision. Every time someone outside the original design team creates a presentation, a social post, a web page or a sign, the guidelines should answer their questions before they have to ask.

That gives a useful test for every page: does this help someone make a decision? A rule about minimum logo size does. A paragraph about the emotional journey of the colour blue does not. Think about who will open the document and what they are trying to finish:

• Designers and agencies producing new material.
• Developers building websites and apps.
• Marketing staff writing and posting day to day.
• Printers, sign makers and other suppliers.
• Partners who need to show your logo next to theirs.

What should brand guidelines contain as a minimum?

A compact set of rules covers the great majority of real questions.

• Logo. The approved versions (full, stacked, symbol only, single colour, reversed), when to use each, clear space, minimum size, and a short set of misuse examples. Include files in vector and raster formats.
• Colour. Each colour with its values for screen and print: HEX, RGB, CMYK and a spot colour reference where relevant. State which colours are primary and which are accents, and show which text and background pairs meet accessibility contrast requirements.
• Typography. The typefaces, the weights in use, a clear hierarchy for headings and body text, licensing notes, and fallback fonts for email and office software where the brand font is unavailable.
• Imagery. The style of photography, illustration and iconography, with examples of what fits and what does not.
• Voice. How the brand writes, shown through examples rather than adjectives.
• Applications. A few real layouts showing the elements working together: a web page, a social post, a document, a slide.

Which sections does nobody read?

Some content appears in almost every guidelines document and is almost never consulted. It is safe to shorten it or move it elsewhere.

• Long brand stories and histories. Valuable for onboarding, but not at the front of a reference tool. A short positioning statement is enough here.
• Mission, vision and values written as essays. If they do not change how a layout or a sentence is produced, they belong in a strategy document.
• Abstract personality models. Archetypes and lists of adjectives such as “bold, human, innovative” describe nearly every brand and guide nobody.
• Dozens of logo misuse examples. Six make the point. Thirty are padding.
• Construction grids and geometry diagrams. Interesting to the designer who drew the logo, irrelevant to anyone using the file.
• Mock-ups of things you will never make. Branded tote bags and vehicle wraps for a software company fill pages without answering a real question.

Cutting these does not weaken the brand. It makes the useful rules easier to find.

How should guidelines handle tone of voice?

Voice sections fail when they stop at description. Telling a writer to be “friendly but professional” leaves every decision open.

What works is contrast and example. Show a sentence as the brand would write it, next to the same message written wrongly. Cover the situations people actually face: a headline, a product description, an error message, a reply to a complaint, a social caption. Add the practical rules that cause daily arguments: how the company name is written, capitalisation of headings and product names, date and number formats, words the brand prefers and words it avoids. If you publish in several languages, state how formal the brand is in each, since that choice does not translate automatically.

What do digital teams need that older guidelines miss?

Many guidelines are still designed around print. A website or app raises questions they never answer:

• Colours and type sizes defined as named design tokens that developers can use directly.
• Interface components: buttons, form fields, links and cards, including hover, focus, disabled and error states.
• Responsive behaviour: how type scales and how the logo adapts on small screens.
• Dark mode, if the brand will support it.
• Motion: how and when things animate, and when they should not.
• Small-format assets: favicon, app icon, social avatars and sharing images.
• Accessibility: contrast, minimum text sizes and focus visibility.

If the brand lives mainly on screens, these pages will be used more than any other. They are often best maintained as a design system linked from the guidelines rather than frozen inside them.

How do you make guidelines people actually use?

Format matters as much as content. A large PDF attached to an email is out of date the day after it is sent. A web page or shared workspace with a stable link can be updated in one place and searched.

Put the assets next to the rules, so that the logo files, fonts, colour values and templates can be downloaded or copied from the same page that explains them. Provide ready-made templates for the things people produce most: presentations, documents, social formats, email signatures. A good template prevents more mistakes than a rule ever will.

Add a one-page summary for people who need the essentials only. Name a person who owns the guidelines and can answer questions. And record changes with a date, so that everyone can tell whether they are looking at the current version.

Frequently asked

If your guidelines are missing, outdated or unused, our branding team can build a practical set, with the files and templates your people need to apply them.