Brand guidelines: what they are for and what they contain
What a set of brand guidelines is, the nine standard chapters, who actually uses them, and how to choose between a 12-page document and an 80-page one.
A set of brand guidelines is the document nobody wants to pay for and everybody hunts for desperately two years later, when a van has to be lettered and no one remembers which blue it was. It is the least spectacular part of a branding project and the only thing that guarantees the branding work survives.
This article explains what a set of guidelines contains, chapter by chapter, who actually uses them (not you), and how to decide between a short version and a complete one. It is written for someone who already has a visual identity and is wondering whether the document is still worth it.
Contents
- The problem brand guidelines solve
- What a set of brand guidelines is
- The standard contents: the nine chapters
- Rules for the logo
- The colour system
- Typography
- Applications
- Who actually uses them
- The auxiliary graphic elements
- How to keep guidelines alive
- A 12-page document or an 80-page one
The problem brand guidelines solve
A visual identity erodes. Not all at once — gradually, through small decisions taken by well-meaning people who had nothing to refer to.
What the erosion looks like, in chronological order:
- Month 1. Everything is perfect. The designer has delivered, the material looks immaculate.
- Month 4. Someone puts a presentation together in a hurry and picks the blue from the software’s default palette. It is nearly the same.
- Month 7. The printer receives a logo out of a PowerPoint, slightly distorted. They print it as it is.
- Month 11. A new employee makes a post with a different font, because the right one was not installed on their computer.
- Month 18. You have four blues, three fonts, and a logo with the wrong proportions on the front of the building.
Nobody made a mistake on purpose. There simply was no document saying what was correct.
Why it is not enough for you to know
Because you are not the one making the material. It is made by printers, agencies, new employees, partners, signage suppliers. Each of them receives some files and takes for themselves the decisions the documentation did not take.
What a set of brand guidelines is
A set of brand guidelines (or brand book) is the document that establishes the rules for using the elements of a visual identity — logo, colours, typography and graphic elements — on any type of printed or digital material, in terms of size, proportion and colour. Its main role is to prevent those elements from being used incorrectly by anyone producing material for the company.
It is not an inspiration document and it is not a portfolio. It is a set of instructions, written to be consulted rather than read cover to cover.
The standard contents: the nine chapters
| # | Chapter | What it contains |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction | What the brand stands for, who the guidelines are for |
| 2 | The logo | Construction, clear space, minimum size, variants |
| 3 | Prohibited uses | What is never done to the logo |
| 4 | Colour | Primary and secondary colours, in every colour space |
| 5 | Typography | Families, hierarchy, system alternatives |
| 6 | Graphic elements | Patterns, shapes, icons, photographic style |
| 7 | Stationery | Business card, letterhead, envelope, invoice |
| 8 | Applications | Signage, vehicles, textiles, digital, packaging |
| 9 | Contact | Who approves deviations and where to ask for the source file |
The last chapter looks bureaucratic and is the most useful in practice. Without it, somebody with a query simply decides for themselves.
Rules for the logo
The most consulted chapter. Four things are mandatory:
Clear space
The free zone around the logo that no other element enters — no text, no image, not the edge of the material. It is defined relatively, not in millimetres: for instance, “the height of the letter X in the wordmark”, on all sides. That way it works at any size.
Minimum size
The smallest size at which the logo stays legible. It is given separately for print (in millimetres) and for screen (in pixels). Below that threshold, the simplified variant is used.
The variants, and when to use them
- Primary — by default, on a light ground.
- Monochrome — for single-colour printing, stamps, engraving.
- Reversed — for dark grounds.
- Icon — for very small spaces: a social profile, a browser icon.
- Horizontal / vertical — according to the shape of the space available.
Prohibited uses
The chapter with examples crossed out in red. The ones most often broken:
- Distortion on one axis (stretching or squashing).
- Rotation.
- Changing the colours.
- Adding shadows, outlines or effects.
- Placing it on a busy photograph, with no contrast.
- Rearranging the elements inside the logo.
- Rebuilding the wordmark in a different font.
The colour system
Every colour is given in four notations, because each medium has a different system:
| Notation | What for | Example of use |
|---|---|---|
| HEX | web | the colours in the CSS |
| RGB | screens | presentations, video |
| CMYK | offset and digital printing | leaflets, business cards |
| Pantone | spot-colour printing | precision print, textiles, plastic |
Why the screen lies
The same colour looks different on screen and on paper, because a screen emits light and paper reflects it. A saturated blue on a monitor can come out of the press washed out and with a violet cast.
That is why the guidelines give the CMYK and Pantone values the designer established after checking, not values converted automatically by software. Automatic conversion is a starting point, not a result.
The proportions
Good guidelines also say in what proportions the colours are used: the main colour on roughly 60% of a piece, the secondary on 30%, the accent on 10%. Without that rule, a correct palette can still produce material that does not look related.
Typography
What gets defined
- The primary family, with the weights in use.
- The secondary family, if there is one.
- The hierarchy: what size and weight the heading, subheading, body text and notes take.
- The system alternative — the font used when the primary one is not available.
The system alternative is not optional
It is the most neglected rule and the most often broken in practice. An employee writing a proposal in Word does not have the company’s licensed font installed. If the guidelines do not say what to use instead, they will choose for themselves — and usually badly.
The guidelines have to say explicitly: “in office documents, use [system font]”.
Licences
Commercial fonts are licensed separately for print, web and applications. The guidelines note which licences the company holds and for how many users. It is administrative information that prevents a legal problem.
Diacritics
For Romanian, the chosen font has to contain ș, ț, ă, î and â in the correct form — with a comma, not a cedilla. A font without latin-ext support shows the Romanian letters from a fallback, at a different weight. That gets checked before the font is chosen, not after.
Applications
The chapter that turns a set of rules into a practical instrument. For each type of material there is a correctly built example, with dimensions and positions:
- Stationery: business card, letterhead, envelope, folder, invoice.
- Digital: email signature, avatar and cover for social networks, presentation template.
- Signage: the fascia sign, interior wayfinding, an event banner.
- Vehicles: lettering on a car and on a van.
- Textiles: T-shirt, overalls, cap — with the application method specified.
- Packaging: where applicable — see Packaging design.
Who actually uses them
Not you. That is the observation which changes how good guidelines get written.
| Who | What they are looking for | How long they have |
|---|---|---|
| The printer | the vector file, CMYK, Pantone, minimum size | 2 minutes |
| The advertising agency | the palette, the fonts, the clear space | 10 minutes |
| A new employee | which font to use in Word, what the signature looks like | 3 minutes |
| The signage supplier | proportions, minimum size, contrast on a ground | 5 minutes |
| The web developer | HEX, fonts, SVG | 5 minutes |
| You | where all these people download them from | — |
They are all looking for one piece of information and they want it fast. Which is why good guidelines have a good contents page, short chapters and an index. Guidelines written as an essay on brand values are consulted by nobody.
The mistakes you see at the printer when a client has no guidelines
From our experience, in order of frequency:
- A logo sent as a low-resolution PNG, forced larger — jagged edges.
- A colour converted automatically from RGB to CMYK — a visibly different shade from the website.
- A logo distorted to fit a space.
- Text set in a similar but not identical font.
- Clear space ignored — the logo pressed against the edge of the material.
- The light-ground variant used on a dark ground.
Each of them means reprinting, or a piece of material circulating incorrectly for years.
The auxiliary graphic elements
The chapter that makes the difference between an identity that can be applied and one that only ever gets applied to business cards.
What they are
The shapes, patterns and treatments that appear on material alongside the logo: a coloured band, a characteristic cut-out, a background pattern, a treatment of the corners, a set of icons, a way of framing photographs.
Why they matter
The logo cannot appear on everything. On a three-metre banner, on a small package or on a square post, the logo takes up a few centimetres; the rest of the surface still has to say “us” — and it says it through the auxiliary elements.
The test: cover the logo on a piece of your material. Do you still recognise the company? If not, the identity rests entirely on the mark, and any material where the mark is small becomes anonymous.
What gets defined for each
- The geometric construction or the rule that generates it.
- The proportions relative to the format of the material.
- The colours permitted.
- What is not done with it.
Photographic style
Part of the same chapter and frequently omitted. It is defined by examples, not by adjectives: four to six photographs representing the direction, plus two or three marked as outside it.
It states: the light (natural or studio), the colour treatment, the distance (wide shots or details), the presence of people, the processing applied.
Without that section, every new piece of material has a different photographic register, and the identity comes apart visually even though the logo and the colours are correct.
Icons
If you use icons, they are part of the identity: the same line weight, the same treatment of corners, the same construction grid. A set of icons taken off the internet, mixed with another, shows immediately — they are “written” by different hands.
How to keep guidelines alive
Guidelines published once and forgotten become, in two years, a description of what the company was.
Where they live
In a shared folder, with access for everyone who produces material — including outside suppliers. Not in an email from 2023, and not only on the designer’s computer.
The minimum folder structure:
Visual-identity/
Brand-guidelines.pdf
Logo/
vector/ (.ai, .eps, .svg, .pdf)
raster/ (transparent .png, at several sizes)
variants/ (monochrome, reversed, icon)
Colours/ (a file with the values, in every notation)
Fonts/ (the files + the licence document)
Templates/ (presentation, proposal, social)
Examples/ (material produced correctly)The last folder is the most useful in practice: someone who has to make a new piece of material looks first at an existing one.
Who updates them
One named person. Not “the marketing team” — a person with a name, listed in the contact chapter of the guidelines.
When they get updated
- When a new type of material is added (the first package, the first vehicle fleet).
- When a font supplier or a licence changes.
- When a new communication channel appears.
- On any approved deviation — an exception accepted once becomes the rule if it is not documented.
Versioning
Every version gets a number and a date, and the old one is archived rather than deleted. When somebody asks “why is the logo on the 2024 leaflet different”, the answer is verifiable.
A 12-page document or an 80-page one
| Short guidelines (10–16 pages) | Complete guidelines (50–80+ pages) | |
|---|---|---|
| Covers | logo, colours, typography, stationery | everything, plus applications and special cases |
| Suited to | a small company, one location, little material | a network, a fleet, products on shelves, a franchise |
| Cost | small, can be included in the identity package | a separate project |
| The risk | it does not cover the situation you are in | it does not get read, because it is intimidating |
How to choose
Count who produces material for your company. If the answer is “our designer and one printer”, short guidelines are enough. If the answer includes several agencies, several suppliers or partners in other towns, you need the complete version — because the guidelines become the only quality control mechanism you have.
The format
A PDF with bookmarks and an interactive contents page, plus the archive of source files, somewhere everyone can reach. Printed guidelines are beautiful and useless: someone who needs the vector file cannot scan it out of a book.
Have a visual identity but no written rules? See what a set of brand guidelines involves, or write to us — we can document an existing identity, not only one we created.
Read next: Visual identity: what a complete package includes, and see the 61 projects in the branding portfolio.