Guidelines exist because most off-brand material is made by accident. An agency uses last year's logo file, a reseller recolours a banner to match a showroom, a colleague stretches the logo to fill a slide. Each person had a reason. Written rules, with the approved files next to them, remove the need to guess.
Brand guide, style guide, brand book: is there a difference?
In practice the terms are used for the same document. Where teams do separate them:
| Term | Usually means |
|---|---|
| Brand guidelines, brand guide | The full set of rules, visual and verbal |
| Brand style guide, style guide | The visual rules only: logo, colour, type, imagery. In editorial teams, "style guide" can also mean the writing rules (spelling, capitalisation, house style) |
| Brand book | A printed or PDF edition of the guidelines, often with the brand story and values at the front |
| Brand standards | The same rules, in organisations that treat them as compulsory, often with an approval process |
What a brand guide includes
A useful guide answers the questions people actually ask while they are making something. Each section below lists what it has to specify to be usable, not only what it should cover.
Logo
- Versions. Primary logo, secondary or stacked version, symbol or emblem on its own, and which one to use where.
- Colour variants. Full colour, one colour, black, white (reversed), and which backgrounds each may sit on.
- Clear space. The minimum empty area around the logo, defined relative to the logo itself (for example, the height of one letter) so it scales with the logo.
- Minimum size. The smallest size at which the logo stays legible, in pixels for screens and millimetres for print.
- Misuse. Examples of what not to do: stretching, rotating, recolouring, adding effects, placing on busy photography.
Logo usage guidelines are the section people consult most often, so they work best placed directly next to the files they govern.
Colour
Each brand colour needs a value for every medium it will be reproduced in:
- HEX or RGB for screens. Web colours are specified in the sRGB colour space.
- CMYK for print, ideally with the print profile it was converted for.
- Pantone (PMS) for spot colour printing, packaging and merchandise.
The guide should also say how colours combine: primary and secondary palette, proportions, and which text colours are allowed on which backgrounds. For digital material, WCAG 2.2 (a W3C Recommendation since October 2023) requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. Text that is part of a logo is exempt, but a brand colour used for body text or buttons is not, so check the palette before it is approved.
Typography
Name the typefaces, the weights in use, and the hierarchy (headline, subhead, body, caption), with the licence terms. A font licence often limits who may install the font and whether it may be embedded on a website or in an app, so state who may use the font files and give a fallback typeface for people who may not.
Imagery
Describe the photography and illustration style in terms someone can check: lighting, setting, framing, whether people appear, how products are shown, what retouching is allowed. Show approved examples and examples to avoid. See brand imagery for what this section usually covers.
Voice and tone
The verbal side: how the brand writes, words it uses and avoids, how it names its products, and how tone changes between a product page, a support reply and a social post.
Why PDF brand books fall out of date
The classic brand book is a PDF exported once and sent around. It is out of date from the next change: a new logo variant, a revised colour, a font swap. Old copies stay in inboxes and shared drives, and nobody can tell which one is current.
A guide that lives as a web page next to the asset library avoids that. The rules are edited in one place, the files beside each rule are the ones in circulation, and the people downloading a logo see how it may be used at the moment they take it. The same rules can then be checked automatically: brand compliance checks compare each new asset with the written rules as it is uploaded.
Brand guidelines in Freedam
In Freedam, the brand guide is a page of the workspace with sections for logos, emblems, colours and typography:
- Each logo and emblem variant carries its recommended backgrounds, its clear space and its minimum and maximum size, and is downloadable in the formats the reader needs.
- Colour palettes hold HEX, CMYK and Pantone values and download as an ASE swatch file for design tools.
- Typefaces are stored with their font files, and the same fonts are used by the template editor and Studio.
- The whole guide downloads as one ZIP file.
- Published through a brand portal, the guide is readable by partners and agencies without an account.
You can generate a first draft of a brand center from your website with the free brand center generator, or read how to create a brand center.
Frequently asked questions
What should brand guidelines include?
At minimum: logo versions with clear space, minimum size and misuse examples; colour values in HEX, RGB, CMYK and Pantone; typefaces and their hierarchy; the photography style; and the voice and tone. Each section should give values someone can check, not descriptions such as "clean" or "modern".
How long should a brand guide be?
As long as the questions people ask. Many teams start with one page per section and add examples when the same mistake appears twice. A guide that is too long to search is a guide nobody reads.
Who should own the brand guidelines?
One person or team, usually the brand lead in marketing, with an agreed way for others to propose changes. Without a single owner, local copies drift.
Related terms
Open a working brand guide
The demo workspace belongs to Nordi, a fictional homewares brand. Its brand guide shows the wordmark and emblem with their usage rules, the colour palettes and the typefaces, each downloadable next to the rule that governs it.
You enter Nordi’s workspace as an administrator. No card, no setup.