When working on a design project where branding is evolved, it is frequent to work with brand guidelines. To not be mistaken with a design system, brand guidelines focus on visual and cognitive elements making a brand recognisable. The goal of brand guidelines document is to pinpoint how to use the brand elements for it to be recognisable and consistent.

Often presented in a PDF document, brand guidelines usually take the format of a documentation, in landscape format, between 10 to 20 pages for a standard document. In can sometimes goes up to 50 pages if there are a lot of use-cases and requirements on how to use the brand elements correctly.

What are brand guidelines for?

Brand guidelines aims to set rules and standards defining how a brand should be represented visually and verbally across platforms. They serve as a blueprint to maintain consistency and coherence in a brand’s identity. It shows how to communicate the values, message and tone of voice of the brand and present it correctly.

Brands are used to build trust between the seller and buyer, through notions such as values, vision but also design. In a highly competitive world, it’s primordial to communicate around your brand with consistency to make it recognisable and build trust while standing out with a unique aesthetic.

Key objectives of brand guidelines are to maintain consistency in communication, wether verbal or visual with a unified way of presenting it. By doing so, they ensure to preserve the brand integrity and for it to remain authentic to the concept originally imagined. They aim to give a frame and parameters on how to use the brand while also guiding creativity to build with those rules.

Brand guidelines will also help streamlining processes by providing clear standards, saving time and effort in creation but also approval process when publishing.

The real goal of good brand guidelines is to allow content creators to be able to understand the brand’s universe, use it in their deliveries and publish it, without waiting for approval from the people in charge who conceived the brand. Either because they’re not available, or simply because the branding was made by an external design agency.

What is inside brand guidelines?

They will typically introduce elements like:

Logo usage: guidelines for positioning the logo correctly around other elements, sizing, white space and its different variations.
Colour palette: colour variations, primary and secondary colours, accent colours and guidance over combinations and usage on different platforms. RGB, Hex code and print (pantone) colours code are recommended to be added.
Typography and font scaling: which font are in used, their font-weight and characteristics such as letter spacing or line height. The differences between headlines and paragraph style, responsive values for font sizes between large screen (desktop) and mobile.
Graphical elements like illustrations and icons: your brand might be using a set of icons and illustrations. It’s important that these icons and illustrations graphical style match with the overall aesthetic of your brand. It’s wise to add instructions on how and when use them correctly.
Imagery and photography: guidelines for photography styles, colour tone, ambiance or elements depicted.
Application: instructions on how to use the brand elements across various channels. Social media or marketing communication but also print, signage, merchandising…

You’ll also find in brand guidelines does and don’ts, to help understand how to implement the brand correctly. Typically, a dos will be making sure that the logo has sufficient space around itself to be displayed correctly. Don’ts will show that the logo shouldn’t be tilted vertically when placed on a document.

The Netflix brand guidelines explains what to not do with their logo, insinuating that everything else than that is okay to do.

How to make a brand guidelines

After all this, let’s dig into how to structure your brand guidelines in order to present them clearly.

To do so, we’ll use a brand guidelines template on Figma. You can re-use in your own design project as a framework basis.

I invite you to open that template in your Figma file and get familiar with its structure. It’s a perfect framework to use for your own needs as it covers everything we saw in this article to present it the correct way.

Let’s study this framework and look at what you should replicate in yours.

1. Introduction slide and index

2. Logo usage

Those slides should present the logo, its eventual colour variations and how to place it around content: whitespace, contrast with other colours.

This is crucial part of your document when handing over the document to non technical people. It’s important give as much rules as possible to ensure the logo is presented the right way.

You can get inspiration from this other brand guidelines from Slack.

It’s also interesting to add the minimum dimensions the logo should have to ensure legibility across different platforms. See how Spotify presents it, on top of their white spacing (exclusion zone) example:

Adding dimensions and scaling is always a good thing to in your brand guidelines. It shows the attention to detail and ensure that you have the perfect consistency in all situations.

3. Typography and font scaling

Typography is a major element of your brand. Humans recognises font and are sensible to its usage and what it means. Through a simple notion as serif or sans serif fonts, you can communicate an aesthetic and tone of voice for your brand.

In this part of your document, you need to introduce the typography you’re using and how to use it. How it should look for headlines, paragraphs, inputs, labels, etc…

This is even more important if your brand is producing a lot of digital assets which requires precision with to typography for product design or consequently dashboards.

Do a first selection of slides to introduce the font families and font weights you’re using. Bold for headlines and regular for paragraphs are usually the norm.

Then, focus on introducing the font scaling: what font size to use for what situation, what platform, what screen size… You don’t need to go so deep in the details, but I would recommend prioritising font sizes for desktop and mobile as a starting point.

4. Colour palette

Major point of brand guidelines, colour palette needs to present the colour that makes your brand so recognisable.

You need to incorporate at least your hex code for each colour with RGB and print (pantone) code to be optional.

You can sort your colours in different categories with primary, secondary and tertiary colours.

Primary are the basic colours of your branding and are most likely shades of black and grey, to white.
Secondary are typically the most used colours across your branding, the ones that make your brand the more recognisable.
Tertiary are colours left outside these two main categories, that are less used or complementary.

In addition, you can add colour pairing. It’ll show what colour combination with, where the contrast is optimal and hierarchy of colour clearly explained.

5. Illustrations

If you’re using illustration in your brand identity, it’s valuable to add a slide displaying all the illustrations in use in order for creatives to see which one they can integrate in their design.

6. Icons

Icons are a very important part of your brand identity and often use across various channels. It’s important that they are clearly presented. You can make a list of all icons in use.

If you want to push the details, you can add recommended dimensions that aligns with your design system. Pixel sizes can be used to present them, just like we’ve seen for the logo in the first point above.

7. Imagery and photography

If the brand uses a lot of visuals and pictures, it’s important to explain how it should be captured and selected.

There need to be a recognisable style in the picture, either by the way it’s taken or the colour filter used. Humans are very sensitive to colours as we’ve seen, and it also comes in pictures. Usage of a specific colour palette to accentuate the personality is recommended.

Wether it’s in the style, or situation presented: lifestyle, people, environments. You can guide what type of picture is preferable for your brand identity with guidelines such as “Natural colour filter, people smiling together and sharing a memorable moment”. You can also re-use dos and don’ts to present those guidelines.

8. Social media

The template we use end its presentation with the social media usage.

As of today, social media takes such a big spot in the communication around the brand that it can sometimes be wise to create a dedicated document to it such as a Communication Strategy. The more example you add, the better is to frame how you want the brand to resonate on social media platforms.

Adding feed and story design can be a good way to show precisely how your brand can communicate the visuals and graphical elements you previously introduced.

9. Ending of the document

Now that you’ve showcased the main elements in of your brand guidelines, you can close your document by adding eventual external references and link to access the ressources presented. Typically, a Google Drive or Dropbox link where people can download the assets such as fonts, illustrations, icons, etc…

How to format your brand guidelines

Brand guidelines will come in different formats:

Here are different ways to present and format your brand guidelines:

PDF documents
This is the traditional and most common format. It’s a printable and sharable document that can include text and images to show how the brand elements should be used. From the previous Figma file we’ve seen, you can export your artboards into a common PDF document.
Online platforms
Some companies use online platforms to store and share their brand guidelines. This can be a good option for keeping the guidelines up-to-date and easily accessible to everyone who needs them.
Interactive presentations
Creative companies may use interactive presentations to introduce their brand guidelines. This can be a more engaging way to present the information, especially if it includes animations, videos and other multimedia elements.

Do you need help making brand guidelines?

.END Agency can help you create your brand guidelines document. Specialised in branding and digital design, .END Agency has helped dozens of companies elevate their brand identity and deliver high quality brand guidelines to document their usage.

Discover .END Agency

Brand guidelines inspirations

I have made a selection of the most inspiring brand guidelines I’ve discovered and worked with as an inspiration in the past. Some or more technical and really represent brand guidelines as they should be – a technical document – some are more visuals and just give you a feeling of what’s the brand is about and what’s their aesthetic, which is closer to what we could call a Brand Book. Enjoy!

Thanks for reading me

François

François Savard

How To Make Good Brand Guidelines: An Easy Introduction Guide