Knowledge base — Definition
Brand Guidelines
What brand guidelines are, what a useful brand guide contains, from logo rules to voice and digital tokens, and how to keep one current and actually used.
What Are Brand Guidelines?
Brand Guidelines are the documented rules for using a brand's identity, covering the logo, colours, typography, imagery, voice and layout, so that anyone producing material for the brand gets the same result. They are sometimes called a brand book, brand standards or style guide.
Guidelines are written for the people who were not in the room when the brand was designed: new staff, printers, agencies, developers and partners. A useful guide answers their practical questions quickly, such as which logo version to use on a dark photo or what hex value the button should be, and shows correct and incorrect examples rather than relying on description alone.
Why Brand Guidelines Matter
- Consistency across suppliers: Printers, sign makers, social media managers and web developers all work from the same values and files.
- Faster production: Fewer questions and revision rounds, because the answers are already written down.
- Protecting the investment: Without rules, a carefully designed identity drifts through stretched logos and near-match colours.
- Easier onboarding: New team members and agencies can produce on-brand work from their first week.
- Accessibility built in: Documenting approved colour pairings and type sizes keeps materials readable and helps meet WCAG and AODA expectations.
What Brand Guidelines Include
- Brand foundation: A short statement of purpose, positioning, audience and personality, giving context for the rules that follow.
- Logo usage: Approved versions, clear space, minimum sizes, placement, backgrounds and a set of "do not" examples. See logo design.
- Colour: The colour palette with HEX, RGB, CMYK and Pantone values, proportions and approved text and background pairings with contrast ratios.
- Typography: Typefaces, weights, the type scale, line spacing and fallbacks for email and documents where brand fonts are not available. See typography.
- Imagery and graphics: Photography style, illustration, iconography, patterns and how they combine in layouts.
- Voice and digital: Tone of voice and writing rules (including spelling conventions and French usage if the brand is bilingual), plus design tokens and component examples for websites and apps.
Common Brand Guidelines Mistakes
- A beautiful PDF nobody opens: Long documents buried in a shared drive get ignored. Keep the essentials easy to find.
- No source files attached: Rules about the logo are useless if people cannot find the right logo files.
- Print-only thinking: Guides that ignore screens leave out hover states, dark mode, social formats and accessibility.
- Too rigid or too vague: Rules that forbid everything get ignored; rules that say "use the logo appropriately" decide nothing.
- Never updated: Once the website or product evolves, an outdated guide creates conflicting versions of the brand.
Best Practices for Brand Guidelines
- Lead with the essentials: Put logo, colour and type on the first pages, with downloadable assets linked right there.
- Show, do not just tell: Include real applications and clear correct and incorrect examples.
- Match the guide to the code: Keep colour and type values in sync with the website's CSS custom properties or design tokens so the two never disagree.
- Write for your actual users: A small business may need a ten-page guide; a large organization with many suppliers may need a full system.
- Assign an owner: One person or team approves exceptions and keeps the guide current, with a version date on the cover.
Brand Guidelines at PerfectPixels
We produce brand guidelines as part of our branding work, sized to how the client actually uses them. Along with the guide we deliver organized asset files and, for digital work, design tokens that match the website code, so the brand stays consistent from print materials to the live site.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between brand guidelines and a style guide?
The terms overlap. Brand guidelines usually cover the whole identity, including logo, colour, type, imagery and voice. A style guide often means an editorial guide for writing, or a web style guide documenting interface components.
How long should brand guidelines be?
As long as the people using them need. A small business with a few suppliers can be well served by a concise guide focused on logo, colour, type and voice, while organizations with many teams and products need more detail.
Should brand guidelines be a PDF or a website?
A PDF is easy to share with printers and partners. A web-based guide is easier to keep current and can link directly to assets and code. Many organizations use both, with the online version as the source of truth.
Related Resources
Further reading: Branding — Nielsen Norman Group.