Capability 03 · Brand Guidelines
Brand guidelines that get opened, not admired.
Brand guidelines earn their keep at six in the evening, when someone who was not in the project has to make a slide. We write documents that hold up at that moment.
- Engagement
- Fixed scope, quoted per project from your brief
- How we work
- Remote and worldwide. Brief, review and delivery by email
- You receive
- A written manual, packaged with the artwork it references
What brand guidelines are
Brand guidelines are the written rules for using a brand: how the logo is placed and sized, which colour values are correct in which system, how type is set, and how the company writes. They exist so that a printer, a developer or a new hire can produce something correct without having to ask.
Nothing in them is invented after the fact. The decisions were made during the identity work: this grey and not that one, this spacing, this weight of type. Left alone, they live only in the designer’s head and in a folder of artwork.
A guidelines document moves them somewhere durable. That is why it comes last in an identity project, once there is something settled to write down. The mark and the system around it get decided first. The document records what was decided, so the identity stops depending on whoever drew it.
What brand guidelines should include
A usable set of brand guidelines covers nine things: logo usage, clearspace and minimum size, misuse, colour in every value system you will produce in, typography and its hierarchy, layout and grid, imagery and iconography, tone of voice, and worked application examples. Anything past that is context. Anything missing from it will be improvised by whoever needs it.
- Logo usage: primary mark, secondary lockups, icon alone, and which to use whereLogo
- Clearspace and minimum size, in a unit derived from the mark itselfLogo
- Misuse: the specific wrong things, shown wrongLogo
- Colour: HEX and RGB for screen, CMYK and Pantone for print, with proportionColour
- Typography: the typefaces, their licences, the scale, the hierarchyType
- Layout: grid, margins, alignment, how a page gets builtLayout
- Imagery and iconography: what a photograph looks like, how an icon is drawnImagery
- Tone of voice: how the company writes, shown in rewritesVoice
- Applications: a card, a slide, a post, a sign, each made properlyApplied
Clearspace and minimum size
Clearspace should be expressed in a unit taken from the mark itself: the height of a counter, the width of a stroke. Then it scales with the logo and still means something at billboard size. Minimum size needs two numbers: pixels for screen, millimetres for print. State both, and state what breaks below them.
Misuse
Misuse pages work because they are visual. Show the mark stretched, recoloured, outlined, rotated, dropped on a busy photograph, crowded by its neighbours. Each one wrong, each with one line saying why. A written prohibition is easy to skim past. A picture of the mistake somebody is about to make is not.
Colour
Colour is where most guidelines quietly fail, because one hex code gets treated as the whole answer. The same colour needs a different value in every system it will be produced in, and those values are not straight conversions of each other.
| System | Medium | Where it is needed |
|---|---|---|
| HEX | Screen | Websites, apps, anything set in CSS. The default reference value for everything digital. |
| RGB | Screen | The same colour in the form video, presentation and office software expect. |
| CMYK | Four-ink process printing. It cannot reproduce every screen colour, so say so rather than letting someone find out on press. | |
| Pantone | Spot ink mixed to a published standard. Specify it wherever the colour must match across suppliers and print runs. | |
| RAL · vinyl | Fabrication | Paint, signage and applied vinyl carry their own reference systems. A sign shop needs a code, not a screenshot. |
The chapter should also state proportion: which colour carries the page and which is only ever an accent. And it should name the text and background pairings that clear accessibility contrast, so nobody has to test them at the moment they are needed.
Typography needs the same discipline: the typefaces, where their licences came from, a scale with real numbers in it, and a hierarchy showing headline, subhead, body and caption on one page. Layout needs the grid, the margins and the alignment rule. That is what makes two pages built by two people look related.
Tone of voice belongs in the same document. A short list of what the company sounds like and what it does not, with three or four before-and-after rewrites, beats a page of adjectives. Some applications run deep enough to be their own project: a full social media kit, a set of printed stationery and collateral. Those get referenced from here.
Brand guidelines, style guide, or brandbook
They are the same document at different scopes. A brand style guide is usually the narrow version: logo, colour, type. Brand guidelines add layout, imagery and voice. A brandbook wraps the rules in the story and positioning behind them. No one enforces the distinction, so agree what you mean before anyone quotes for it.
The distinction that matters is whether the document is a specification or a manifesto. A specification tells a supplier the minimum reproduction size in millimetres. A manifesto tells them the brand is bold, human and unafraid. The second is easier to write, which is why so many documents are only that. Only the first stops a logo being printed at eight millimetres on a folder.
Written to be used
Guidelines fail in a predictable way. Commissioned as a deliverable, they get designed to look impressive on the day they are presented: full-bleed spreads, a manifesto, a hundred and twenty pages. Then nobody opens them, because finding the minimum size takes four minutes and guessing takes none.
Length is not quality. It is the easiest thing to add and the easiest to mistake for rigour. The right length is the one at which every question a real user will ask has an answer.
So we write in plain language and build the document as something you look things up in: numbered sections, a contents page, headings that match the question you arrived with. Hand it to a new freelancer who has never seen the brand and ask for a slide and a printed card. Everything they have to ask is a missing page.
If what you want is an art-directed book to publish as a case study, we are the wrong agency for it. Finished work sits in the agency archive (opens in a new tab).
Whether you need them yet
If you are the only person who touches the brand, you still need a short set. Work leaves your hands all the time: to a printer, a developer, a freelancer, your first hire. At that moment the document is the only thing standing between your brand and somebody’s best guess.
The people most likely to bend a brand out of shape are the suppliers and contractors who receive a logo by email with nothing else attached to it. A printer will guess at a colour. That is not carelessness: they were not told, and the file did not say.
For a solo founder it also works as memory. Six months on you will not remember which of the three greys was correct. Short is fine at that stage: logo rules, colour values, type, one page of applications.
What you receive
A guidelines project runs through the same four stages as everything else here: brief, directions, refinement, delivery. On this kind of project the middle two are mostly about structure: what needs covering, and in what order. Each stage is set out on the process page.
Delivery is a PDF. It opens on every machine, attaches to an email to a supplier without setup, and does not depend on a subscription staying active. It arrives packaged with the artwork it refers to, named so a file can be found from the page that mentions it. For what each format is actually for, see which logo files you should receive. If your team would rather have a linked page in a shared workspace, say so in the brief.
Scope is fixed and quoted per project from the brief. Ownership of the document and its source files transfers to you in writing on final payment, so you can extend it later without coming back to us.
Common questions
What should brand guidelines include?
Nine chapters cover it: logo usage, clearspace and minimum size, misuse examples, colour in every value system you will produce in, typography and hierarchy, layout and grid, imagery and iconography, tone of voice, and worked application examples.
Anything past that is context. Anything missing from it gets improvised by whoever needs it, usually at speed and usually wrongly.
What is the difference between brand guidelines, a brand style guide and a brandbook?
They are the same document at different scopes. A style guide is usually the narrow version: logo, colour, type. Guidelines add layout, imagery and voice. A brandbook wraps the rules in the story and positioning behind them.
No one enforces the distinction, so agree what you mean before anyone quotes for it. The question worth asking is whether the document is a specification or a manifesto.
Do I need brand guidelines if I am a one-person business?
Yes, though a short one. The risk sits outside your own hands: every supplier, contractor and future hire who receives your logo by email with nothing attached to it.
It also works as memory. Six months on you will not remember which grey was the right one, or why the mark is never set on a photograph.
How long should a brand guidelines document be?
As long as it takes to answer every question a real user will ask, and no longer. Length is the easiest thing to add to a document and the easiest to mistake for rigour.
A hundred and twenty pages nobody opens is worth less than twenty that get used. Judge it by whether someone can find the minimum print size in under a minute.
What format do I receive brand guidelines in?
A PDF, packaged with the artwork it refers to and named so that a file can be found from the page that mentions it. A PDF opens anywhere, attaches to an email to a printer without any setup, and does not depend on a subscription staying active.
If your team would rather have it as a linked page in a shared workspace, say so in the brief and it gets scoped that way.
Every brand here started as an email.
Tell us what you’re building: the name, the audience, who else will be using the brand once it exists. We read every brief ourselves and reply with how we’d approach it, what it costs, and when you’ll have it. No forms, no middlemen.
inquire@xstudioz.com