How to make brand guidelines your team will actually use
Most brand guidelines end up unread in a folder. A few principles for ones that keep a brand consistent as the business grows.
A lot of brand guidelines are beautiful, thorough documents that nobody opens after launch day. Meanwhile the team works from an old logo found in an email thread, and the brand slowly drifts.
Guidelines are only worth having if they get used. Here’s how to make that more likely.
Write for the people who’ll use them
Think about who actually makes things with your brand: the office manager producing a newsletter, a printer, a sign maker, the new marketing hire, the developer building your website. Most of them aren’t designers. They need clear answers, not design theory.
Use plain language. “Leave at least this much space around the logo” beats a paragraph about exclusion zones.
Keep it short
A ten-page guide that people read is worth more than an eighty-page one they don’t. Put the essentials first:
- The logo versions, and when to use each
- Colours, with exact values for print and screen
- Typefaces, and what to use when they aren’t available
- Tone of voice in a few clear principles, with examples
- A handful of real examples showing it all working together
Detailed specifications for signage, vehicles or packaging can live in separate documents for the suppliers who need them.
Show, don’t just tell
Examples teach faster than rules. Show a social post, a letter, a presentation slide and a poster done properly. Where mistakes are common, show those too: the stretched logo, the wrong colour, the busy background. A few clear dos and don’ts prevent most problems.
Make the files easy to find
Most brand drift isn’t carelessness. People simply can’t find the right file, so they use whatever they have. Alongside the guidelines, provide an organised asset folder:
- every logo version, clearly named, in vector, PNG and SVG
- colour references in a format people can copy
- editable templates for the things you make often, such as social posts, presentations, letterheads and proposals
Share it somewhere everyone already looks, and make sure there’s only one version.
Templates do the heavy lifting
If your team makes the same kinds of things every week, templates will do more for consistency than any rulebook. They build the guidelines in, so people don’t have to remember them. This is especially true on social media, where volume is high and time is short.
Include tone of voice
How a brand sounds matters as much as how it looks. A few principles, each with a before-and-after example, help everyone who writes on the brand’s behalf, from website copy to a reply on Instagram. With A Medida Golf Experiences, keeping one consistent voice across social, website copy, blog posts and emails is a central part of the work.
Let the guidelines grow with you
A brand isn’t finished at launch. New channels, new products and new situations come up, and guidelines should be updated when they do. Baltic Bespoke is a good example: the identity has grown from a simple brand package to hundreds of touchpoints, from vehicles to signage, while keeping its core. That works when someone looks after the system, adding to it rather than reinventing it each time.
Digital beats PDF
A web page or a shared, living document is easier to keep current than a PDF, and easier to link to. When something changes, everyone sees the latest version.
Every brand identity project we deliver includes digital guidelines and an organised asset folder for exactly this reason. If your current guidelines are gathering dust, or you never had any, let’s talk.