How to Write Brand Guidelines That People Actually Follow: A Practical Guide

Brand guidelines stop the slow drift where your logo appears in five colours, your flyers use three fonts, and your social posts sound like five different companies. But most guidelines fail because they’re written like legal documents nobody opens. Good guidelines are short, visual, and practical: they tell a busy employee exactly what to do. This guide shows you how to fill in the template so the finished document gets used, not filed.

When to Use This

Write brand guidelines when your business is growing past the founder doing everything, new staff, freelancers, or an agency need to represent you correctly without asking every time. Also write them when inconsistency is already visible: mismatched signage, off-brand social posts, a website that looks nothing like the brochure. Revisit them before any rebrand, new product line, or expansion into a new channel.

How to Fill It Out

Section 1: Brand story and personality. In two or three sentences, say what the business stands for and how it should feel. Example: “Harbor & Pine is a family-run furniture studio. We sound warm and knowledgeable, like a friend who’s good with their hands, never pushy, never corporate.” Add 3–4 personality words with do/don’t pairs: “Confident, not arrogant: ‘Our oak tables last decades’, never ‘the best tables in the world.’”

Section 2: Logo. Show the primary logo and any approved variations (stacked, horizontal, icon-only). State the clear-space rule and minimum size in plain terms: “Leave breathing room equal to the height of the ‘H’ on all sides; never use the logo smaller than 30 mm wide in print.” List the don’ts with examples: don’t stretch, don’t recolour, don’t place on busy photos. One page of don’ts saves a hundred corrections.

Section 3: Colours. List your palette with exact values, the colour codes your designer uses, in both print and screen formats, and name each colour’s job: “Deep teal: headings and logo. Warm sand: backgrounds. Charcoal: body text.” Give the proportions: roughly 60% neutral, 30% secondary, 10% accent. Exact codes matter because “blue-ish” reproduces differently on every screen and printer.

Section 4: Typography. Name the primary typeface for headings and the one for body text, with fallbacks for when the fonts aren’t available (emails, documents): “Headings: Merriweather Bold. Body: Open Sans Regular. Fallback: Georgia / Arial.” Show the sizes for common uses, page headings, subheadings, body copy, so a flyer and the website share the same hierarchy.

Section 5: Imagery and photography style. Describe what good brand photos look like: “Natural light, real workshop settings, people mid-task, never staged handshakes or stock-photo smiles.” Include 2–3 example images. This is the section most small businesses skip and most need, because imagery is what people notice first.

Section 6: Voice and tone. Give practical writing rules with examples: “Write short sentences. Use ‘you’ more than ‘we.’ Prices always include tax. Never use exclamation marks in formal letters.” Add before-and-after examples: “Before: ‘We are pleased to announce our revolutionary new product line.’ After: ‘Our new shelving range is here, built from reclaimed oak, priced from $89.’” Examples teach faster than rules.

Section 7: Applications. Show the rules in action: a business card, a social post template, an email signature, a van livery. Even rough mockups help, because people copy what they see. Note where the master files live, the shared folder with the logo files, templates, and fonts, so nobody recreates them from a screenshot.

Common Mistakes

1. Writing a 60-page brand bible. Nobody reads it, so nobody follows it. Aim for 8–12 pages that answer real questions. If a rule doesn’t change what someone makes, cut it. You can always expand later; you can’t make someone read a doorstop.

2. Guidelines with no examples. “Be authentic” means nothing until you show it. Every rule needs a visual or written example, the right way and the wrong way side by side. People imitate examples; they ignore abstractions.

3. Hiding the files. Guidelines that say “use the logo” without saying where the logo lives force people to Google your own company and pull a blurry version from an old press article. Link the asset folder directly in the document and keep it current.

4. Writing them once and never enforcing them. Guidelines die when the first off-brand flyer goes out unchallenged. Give one person the job of brand guardian, reviewing major pieces before they ship, and back them up when they push back. Gentle, consistent correction in the first month sets the culture.

Who Needs to Sign Off

The business owner or founder approves the guidelines, since the brand is their call. If a designer created the visual identity, have them verify the technical specs (colour codes, clear space, file formats) before sign-off. Once approved, circulate to everyone who creates anything public, staff, freelancers, agencies, and note that they’ve received it.

How Often to Review and Update

Review annually, or whenever something changes: a rebrand, a new product line, a new channel, or a merger. Between reviews, update the asset links whenever files move, and add new examples as good (and bad) work appears, real examples from your own output teach better than stock ones. If you find yourself correcting the same mistake three times, the guideline covering it needs rewriting, not repeating.

---

Download the free Brand Guidelines Sheet.