How to Create Brand Guidelines Your Team Will Actually Use

Short answer: To create brand guidelines, start with your brand's purpose and personality, then set clear rules for your logo, colours, typography, imagery and tone of voice. Show real examples of what to do and what not to do, turn the rules into templates, and keep everything in one shared place that you update at least twice a year. Good brand guidelines are short, visual and easy to find.

Most brand guidelines fail for one simple reason. Nobody opens them. They sit in a 60-page PDF on someone's laptop, while the people making social posts, ads and sales decks guess their way through.

This guide shows you how to build brand guidelines that work in the real world. It's written for marketing teams, founders and small businesses, not just designers.

Brand guidelines are a set of rules that explain how your brand looks and sounds. They cover your logo, colours, fonts, images and tone of voice, and they show people how to use each one correctly. You might also hear them called a brand style guide, brand book or brand standards.

Their job is simple: make sure your brand looks and sounds like the same company everywhere, no matter who is creating the content.

One of the most famous examples is the NASA Graphics Standards Manual from 1975, designed by Danne & Blackburn. It set out exactly how the NASA "worm" logo should appear on everything from letterheads to space shuttles. It was so well made that it was reissued as a book in 2015 and is still studied by designers today.

Without guidelines, every new person makes their own choices. Over time, small differences add up. Your website uses one blue, your ads use another, and your sales deck uses a font nobody approved.

Clear guidelines help you:

• **Look professional.** Customers trust brands that look the same every time they see them.
• **Work faster.** People stop asking "which logo do I use?" and get on with the job.
• **Onboard people quickly.** New staff, freelancers and agencies can get it right from day one.
• **Grow without losing control.** More channels and more people don't have to mean more mess.

There is some evidence for the money side too. In Lucidpress's 2019 State of Brand Consistency survey, brand managers estimated that consistent branding could lift revenue by up to 33%. Later editions put the figure at 10 to 20%. These are estimates from people working in branding, not measured results, but the direction is clear.

Keep it to what people actually need. Here is what a complete set of guidelines should cover:

Before you choose a single colour, answer these questions in plain language:

• Why does the business exist?
• Who are your customers?
• How do you want people to feel when they deal with you?
• Which 3 to 5 words describe your personality? (For example: friendly, clear, confident.)

Keep this to one page. Every rule that comes after should link back to it.

Collect every version of your logo: full colour, black, white, horizontal, stacked and icon only. Then set the rules:

• **Clear space:** the empty area around the logo, often based on the height of one letter in the logo.
• **Minimum size:** the smallest size at which the logo is still readable, in pixels for screens and millimetres for print.
• **Wrong uses:** show 4 to 6 examples, such as stretching, recolouring, adding shadows or placing it on busy photos.

Showing the wrong uses matters more than people think. People remember a picture of a mistake far better than a written rule.

Pick 2 to 3 main colours and 3 to 5 supporting colours. For each one, list the HEX code (for web), RGB (for screens) and CMYK (for print). Add a Pantone reference if you print a lot.

Then say what each colour is for. "Navy for headlines and buttons" is far more useful than "Navy, HEX #1F3A5F".

Check your colour pairs for accessibility. Under the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.x, level AA), normal text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against its background, and large text needs at least 3:1. Free contrast checkers will tell you in seconds whether a pair passes.

Most brands need only two fonts: one for headings and one for body text. List:

• The font names and the weights you use (for example Regular, Medium, Bold)
• Sizes for each heading level and body text, on screen and in print
• A backup font for emails and documents, where your brand font may not load

Typography is where consistency often slips across channels, because different tools handle fonts differently. Test your fonts in your email platform, slide software and social design tool before you publish the guide.

Describe your photo style in simple terms: bright or moody, people or products, posed or natural. Then show it. Six good examples and three bad ones will teach more than a page of text.

Do the same for illustrations, icons and any shapes or patterns you use.

Your tone of voice is how your brand sounds in writing. Use a simple "we are / we are not" table:

Add a short list of words you always use and words you never use. Then include one before-and-after example, such as a product description rewritten in your brand voice. Mailchimp's public content style guide is a good model if you want to see how a well-known company does this.

This is the step most companies skip, and it is the one that makes guidelines work. Rules tell people what to do. Templates do most of it for them.

Start with the 10 formats you create most often. For most brands, that means:

• Social media posts and stories
• A presentation deck (see our presentation design work for examples)
• Ad sizes for your main platforms
• Email headers
• Documents and one-pagers

Lock the brand elements (logo position, fonts, colours) in your design tool so people can only change the text and images.

Put your guidelines somewhere everyone can reach in a few seconds. A shared online page or design tool board works far better than a PDF attachment. Add a one-page summary for people who just need the logo, colours and fonts.

Name one person as the owner of the guide. Review it at least twice a year, and update it whenever you add a new channel, such as TikTok or a mobile app.

Sending a new version of the brand deck every quarter rarely fixes anything. The problem is usually not missing rules. It is that the rules are hard to use. The most common reasons guidelines fail are:

• **They're too long.** If people can't find an answer in 30 seconds, they'll guess.
• **They're only a PDF.** PDFs go out of date the moment they're sent.
• **There are no templates.** Without templates, everyone starts from a blank page.
• **Nobody owns them.** Without an owner, nobody updates them or flags mistakes.
• **They only cover visuals.** Tone of voice gets forgotten, so the brand looks right but sounds wrong.

If your brand already looks different from channel to channel, our guide to keeping your brand consistent across marketing channels shows how to audit and fix it. If you run more than one location, branch or franchise, read our guide to brand consistency across multiple locations.

Use this list to check your guide before you share it:

• One-page brand foundations (purpose, audience, personality)
• Every logo version, in SVG, PNG and EPS formats
• Logo clear space, minimum size and 4 to 6 wrong uses
• Colour codes in HEX, RGB and CMYK, with what each colour is for
• Colour pairs checked against WCAG contrast rules
• Two fonts with weights and sizes, plus a backup font
• Photo and illustration style, with good and bad examples
• Tone of voice table, word list and one before-and-after example
• Templates for your 10 most-used formats
• One shared home, one owner and a review date

You can write the foundations and tone of voice yourself. Nobody knows your business better. The visual rules and templates are where a designer earns their fee, because they know how logos, colours and fonts behave across print, screens and different tools.

A good middle ground: write the foundations in-house, then have a designer build the visual system and templates around them. Our brand identity design service does exactly this, from logo rules to ready-to-use templates for social media and presentations. If you need ongoing design after the guide is done, you can see how our plans work on the pricing page.

Most small and mid-sized businesses need 10 to 20 pages, plus a one-page summary. Larger brands with many products or locations may need more, but length only helps if people can still find answers quickly.

Your brand identity is the set of visual and verbal elements themselves: logo, colours, fonts, images and voice. Brand guidelines are the rules that explain how to use them.

Review them at least twice a year, and update them whenever you add a new channel, launch a new product line or change your logo or colours.

Yes. A small business can create simple guidelines with a logo, two colours, two fonts and a tone of voice table. A designer becomes more valuable when you need templates, print files and rules that work across many channels.

An online page or shared design board is best for day-to-day use, because it is always up to date. Keep a PDF copy for partners and printers who need a file.