Most brand guidelines are too long to use and miss the things people actually need. What to include, what to cut, and how to make them get followed.
The test of brand guidelines is not how thorough they are. It is whether someone who has never met you can produce something on-brand at 5pm on a Friday without asking. Most guidelines fail that test by being too long to read and too vague where it matters.
What people actually need
Logo — with the rules that get broken
Every version as a real file, plus minimum size, clear space, and the specific things people get wrong: on photography, on the brand colour, at 16 pixels in a favicon. Show wrong examples. They are more useful than right ones.
Colour — with values for every medium
HEX, RGB, CMYK and Pantone. Then the part usually missing: which colours are for large areas, which are accents, and which combinations are approved. Include contrast pairings that pass accessibility requirements — if that is not documented, someone will pick a failing combination.
Type — with a fallback that exists
Typeface, weights, and a scale showing actual sizes. Critically: what to use when the licensed font is unavailable — in email, in a client's Word template, on someone's laptop. Without a named fallback, people substitute at random.
Tone of voice — with sentences, not adjectives
"Confident but approachable" tells nobody anything. Show the same message written well and badly. Include a short list of words you use and words you never use. This is the most-skipped and most-used section.
Imagery — with a real library
Describe the style, then link to actual approved assets. A description with no library means everyone searches stock photos and the brand drifts within a month.
The 20-page test. If the core document is longer than about twenty pages, nobody will read it. Put the essentials in a short document and the exhaustive detail in an appendix people can consult when they need it.
What to leave out
- Brand story mythology. Inspiring for the launch meeting, useless when someone is making a slide.
- Rules you will not enforce. They teach people the document is optional.
- Design theory. Explain what to do, not why it is beautiful.
- Anything without an asset attached. A rule with no downloadable file will be approximated.
Make them get used
- Put the assets where people work — a shared drive, a template library, a design system. Not a PDF attached to an email from last year.
- Ship templates, not just rules. A correct slide deck, email signature and social template prevent more drift than any amount of documentation.
- Name an owner. Someone answers questions and approves exceptions, or the guidelines rot.
- Version them, with a date on the front page. People need to know they have the current one.
For a website specifically
Brand guidelines and a design system are not the same thing. Guidelines describe intent; a design system is working code — components, tokens, states. If a website is being built, ask for the design system as a deliverable, because that is what keeps the site consistent after launch. It is worth raising when choosing an agency.
Frequently asked questions
How long should brand guidelines be?
The core document, ten to twenty pages. Anything longer belongs in an appendix. The measure is whether a new starter can use them unaided in fifteen minutes.
Do we need brand guidelines for a small business?
A short one, yes — even two pages covering logo, colour, type and voice. It stops the drift that happens the moment more than one person makes something.
How often should brand guidelines be updated?
Review annually, update whenever something real changes. Version and date them so nobody works from a superseded copy.
