What goes in a set of brand guidelines.
The 8 sections a workable guidelines document needs, what to write in each one, and the mistake most commonly made in it.
Brand guidelines are the written rules that let someone who was not in the room apply your brand correctly. A workable set covers 8 sections: overview, logo system, colour, typography, imagery, voice and tone, applications, and a do-not list. This page sets out what belongs in each one, and the mistake most commonly made in it, in enough detail to write the document yourself. It is a structure guide, not a file to download.
The 8 sections
1. Brand overview
Gives everyone who opens the document the context they need before they start making decisions about artwork.
What to write: A paragraph on what the business does and who it is for. A short positioning statement. 3 to 5 values written as behaviours rather than adjectives, so they can actually be applied.
Most commonly missed: Writing a mission statement nobody can act on. If a designer cannot use a line to choose between 2 options, it does not belong in the guidelines.
2. Logo system
The most-used and most-misused asset. This section prevents the slow degradation that happens when people improvise.
What to write: The primary logo plus every approved variation (horizontal, stacked, mark only, single-colour, reversed). Clear space expressed as a proportion of the logo itself, not in millimetres. Minimum size for print and for screen. Where each variation is used.
Most commonly missed: Supplying a single file and hoping for the best. Without a reversed version, someone will place the dark logo on a dark background inside a month.
3. Colour palette
Colour drifts faster than anything else in a brand, because every tool the business uses has its own colour picker.
What to write: Primary, secondary and accent colours with HEX for screen, RGB for digital artwork, CMYK for print and a Pantone reference where the brand is printed on materials that need matching. Rules for which colour dominates and which are accents.
Most commonly missed: Listing HEX codes only. The printed version then comes back a different colour and nobody can explain why.
4. Typography
Type carries more of the brand's character than most owners expect, and it is the part most likely to be substituted by whoever is in a hurry.
What to write: Heading and body typefaces, the weights actually in use, and the licence position for each (including web font licensing). A hierarchy from H1 down to caption with sizes and line heights. A documented fallback for anyone without the licensed font.
Most commonly missed: Naming a font nobody outside the design file has a licence for. Name the fallback in the document and the substitution stays controlled.
5. Imagery and photography
Businesses can share a logo style and still look nothing alike, because of the pictures they choose.
What to write: The subject matter that is on-brand and the subject matter that is not. Treatment: colour grade, contrast, whether people look at camera. Cropping rules. Where stock is acceptable and where it is not.
Most commonly missed: Leaving this section out entirely, which is the single most common gap in small business guidelines.
6. Voice and tone
The written half of the brand. It governs far more surface area than the logo does: emails, quotes, invoices, social posts, signage copy.
What to write: Pick 3 or 4 tone attributes and give a short do-and-do-not example under each. Vocabulary the brand uses and words it avoids. How the tone shifts between a sales page and a service update. A worked before-and-after rewrite of 1 real sentence.
Most commonly missed: Listing adjectives with no examples. A line like “friendly but professional” means something different to every person who reads it.
7. Applications
Shows the system working rather than describing it, which is what most people actually copy from.
What to write: The brand applied to the things this business genuinely produces: business card, email signature, invoice, social profile, vehicle, uniform, signage. Real examples beat mockups of items you will never print.
Most commonly missed: Filling the section with impressive applications that do not exist. A cafe does not need a billboard example. It needs a menu and a shopfront.
8. Do not do this
Short, visual and the most-read page in most guidelines documents.
What to write: Side-by-side correct and incorrect examples for the failures you can already predict: stretching the logo, recolouring it, adding effects, placing it on a busy photo, retyping the wordmark in a different font.
Most commonly missed: Writing the rules as prose. This section works when it can be understood at a glance without reading.
How to turn this outline into a document
- Create the document in whatever tool your business already uses. The best format is the one your staff can open without asking for access.
- Use the 8 headings above in that order. It moves from why, to the marks, to the rules, to the proof, which is the order a reader needs them in.
- Fill each section with your real assets: actual files, actual colour values, actual font names and licences. A guidelines document with placeholder content is worse than none, because people trust it and get it wrong.
- Add screenshots of the brand on real material you have produced. This is the part people copy from.
- Put a version number and a date on the front page, and store it where the current version is obvious. Guidelines fail more often through 3 competing copies than through bad rules.
- Review it whenever the brand changes, and otherwise once a year.
How long should it be?
A sole trader can cover all 8 sections properly in 6 to 10 pages. A business with several people producing artwork usually needs 20 to 30, because the applications and do-not sections carry more weight. Length is not the measure. The measure is whether a contractor you have never met can open it and produce something correct without asking a question.
What a structure guide cannot do for you
It cannot supply the assets. If the logo does not exist as vector artwork with single-colour and reversed versions, section 2 has nothing to document. If the colour palette was never set beyond a HEX code someone liked, section 3 will not survive its first print job. Guidelines record decisions. They do not make them.
That is the practical order of work: settle the identity first through brand design, then write the rules that keep it intact. If you are documenting a brand that is about to change anyway, a brand refresh comes first and the guidelines follow it. Where the guidelines are being written so that a third party can produce collateral without supervision, that collateral is graphic design work and worth scoping at the same time.
Having them written for you
A written set of brand guidelines from a designer differs from a self-built one in 2 ways: the rules are specific to your brand rather than generic, and the document shows the brand working rather than describing it. If you want that priced against your actual situation, send the brief through the quote form. It goes to an experienced Australian brand design studio, which quotes on the real scope. We aim to respond within 1 business day. Costs vary too much by scope for us to publish a figure here, so we do not: the cost calculator will at least show you how a guidelines document sits against the rest of a project.
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