Brand guidelines: what to include, with an outline to copy

Brand guidelines are the rules and files that let anyone use your brand identity correctly without calling the designer. They show the logo versions and how to space and size them, the exact colour values for print and screen, the typefaces, how images and words should feel, and real examples of the brand at work. They usually come as a PDF, though a web page or a shared folder can do the job too.

The test of a guide is simple. Can a stranger, such as a new printer, a social media manager or an agency, make something on-brand from the guide alone? If they still need to phone you, something is missing.

This article goes through a guide section by section, then covers how long it should be for a small business and for a group with sub-brands, which format to choose, how to keep it alive, and ends with an outline you can copy as a table of contents. If you are still building the identity itself, start with my guide to brand identity.

What brand guidelines contain, section by section

1. The brand in brief

One page before any rules: what the business does, for whom, and a few words for how the brand should feel. It gives every later rule a reason, and a reason is what people fall back on when no rule covers their case.

2. Logo: versions, clear space, minimum size and misuse

This is the longest section and the most used.

• Versions: the main lockup, horizontal and stacked versions, a compact mark for small spaces, one-colour and reversed versions.
• Construction: how the mark is built, where that helps people respect its shapes.
• Clear space: the empty area around the logo, measured with a part of the logo itself, such as the height of a letter, so it scales with the logo.
• Minimum size: the smallest width at which each version still reads, in millimetres for print and pixels for screens. Find it by printing the logo smaller and smaller until it fails, rather than guessing.
• Backgrounds: which version goes on light, dark, colour and photo backgrounds.
• Misuse: a page of what not to do, shown as pictures: stretched, recoloured, rotated, with added shadows, on a busy photo, or with the name re-set in another font. People skim rules, but they remember a picture of a squashed logo.

Bilingual marks need extra care. On SLS, a Saudi real estate company, the Arabic سلس and the Latin SLS are drawn on one baseline so they share their strokes. A guide for a mark like that has to show every approved Arabic, English and bilingual lockup, and make clear that the two scripts are never re-spaced or typed out in a font.

The Book and Technology Fair in Saudi Arabia shows a compact order that works. Of the two identity directions I presented, the second, a green shield in the colours of the kingdom, was taken through to a guidelines manual: the cover, the idea behind the logo, typography, construction and clear space, logo variations and colours. That is the core of any guide, in the order people need it.

3. Colour

List each colour with its role and its values:

• Pantone for spot-colour printing, with both the coated (C) and uncoated (U) references. Pantone itself notes that the same colour looks quite different on coated and uncoated paper.
• CMYK for four-colour print, confirmed on a real proof.
• RGB and HEX for screens.

Then add what values alone do not say: the proportions (which colour leads, which is an accent), the approved text and background pairs, and accessibility. For text on screens, the W3C's accessibility guidelines (WCAG) ask for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text, at level AA. Check your brand pairs against that and mark which are safe for text. A pale brand colour can be perfect for a background and useless for a button label.

4. Typography, in Arabic and English

Name the typeface for each role (headings, text, numbers) in each script, with weights, sizes and line heights. For a bilingual brand, give Arabic and Latin their own settings, because the same point size rarely looks the same in both. Say which digits the Arabic text uses. Add fallback fonts for email and office documents, where the brand fonts are not installed, and the licence details: who holds the licence and which uses it covers. How to choose and pair the faces in the first place is in choosing brand fonts.

5. Graphic elements and grids

Patterns, shapes and icons, and how far they may be cropped or scaled. Then the grids: margins, columns and where the logo sits on the formats the brand uses most, such as an A4 page, a square post, a story and a roll-up. A grid is what makes different items look like one family.

On Tarik Alamal Alalamia, a Saudi business services company, concentric arcs grow out of the mark into a pattern that frames every page. The brand book had to serve stationery, certificates, gifts, uniforms and a launch campaign. The identity was also shown in a second colour direction, navy, and seeing the same arcs and type in orange and in navy is a good reminder of a guide's real job: to pin down the system, so a colour can change without the brand changing.

6. Imagery

Photography, illustration, 3D and AI-generated images, with rules for light, crop, colour and subject. Show right and wrong examples side by side. If the team makes images with AI tools, add a few lines: which tools are approved, how AI images are labelled, that the real logo and products are placed as files rather than redrawn by a tool, and that Arabic text is set by a person, never generated inside the image.

7. Tone of voice

How the brand writes: a few adjectives, words to use and avoid, and short examples, such as a headline, a post caption and a reply to a complaint. Write the Arabic and English voice separately. Each language has its own habits, and a translated voice sounds translated. For Arabic, decide between Modern Standard Arabic, dialect or a mix, and when each one is used.

8. Applications

Real examples of the brand at work: business cards, letterhead, signage, uniforms, packaging, vehicles, presentations, website screens. Applications prove the rules work, and they answer questions faster than any rule.

9. Social media templates

Profile picture, cover, post and story templates, highlight covers and seasonal versions for Ramadan, Eid and national days. Show where the content goes, where the logo sits and which type and colours to use, and hand over the editable templates with the guide, not only pictures of them.

10. Motion

Even a small brand appears in video now. Cover the logo animation and its still end frame, transitions, how text enters the screen, the general speed and feel of movement, and any sound logo. Supply the animation files, so nobody rebuilds them badly.

11. Files, contacts and version

Where the files live, what each folder holds, who to ask, and the version number with its date. This small page is what stops people using a logo they saved from a website years ago.

How long should brand guidelines be?

Long enough to answer real questions, and no longer. The length depends on how many people and places use the brand.

A group needs one more section near the front: the brand architecture. It explains how the brands relate, what they share, what each owns, and how the group's name appears next to each. Rawnaq Medical Group in Riyadh runs a medical complex, a training centre and a skin care complex, each with its own mark. Each mark is drawn from a flowing Arabic letter and set in the same type; teal belongs to the group and the training centre, and a fresh green to the skin care complex, with its line «نزيدك جمالاً». The brand guide covers the colours, type, pattern and every item, from letterhead to roll-up, so patients see one trusted group behind three names.

PDF, web page or shared folder?

Most brands need two of these: a guide that explains, as a PDF or a web page, and a folder that holds the files. NASA, for example, publishes its brand guidelines as a public web page covering its logo versions, colour values in Pantone, CMYK and RGB, protected space, minimum sizes, typography and misuse. Its 1976 Graphics Standards Manual for the "worm" logotype, now a PDF on NASA's own site, is still studied by designers.

How to keep the guide alive

A guide that is never updated turns into a history book. A few habits keep it useful:

• Give it an owner, one named person who answers questions and approves changes.
• Put a version number and date on the cover, with a short list of what changed.
• Keep one source. One link or folder for everyone, and old copies deleted.
• Collect the questions. Every question someone asks is a missing paragraph or example.
• Add real work. Replace mockups with photos of real signs, packs and posts as they appear.
• Review it when something new arrives: a channel, a branch, a sub-brand, an agency.
• Prefer templates to rules. An editable template that is already right beats three pages explaining how to get it right.

A brand guidelines outline you can copy

Use this as the table of contents of your guide. Keep the sections you need, delete the rest, and fill each one with your own values, files and examples.

1. Cover: brand name, version number, date
2. Contents, and how to use this guide
3. The brand in brief: what we do, for whom, how we want to feel
4. Brand architecture (for groups): the brands and how they relate
5. Logo - the main lockup and the idea behind it - horizontal, stacked and compact versions - Arabic, English and bilingual lockups - construction and clear space - minimum sizes for print and screen - colour versions and backgrounds - misuse
6. Colour - palette and roles - Pantone (C and U), CMYK, RGB and HEX values - proportions and approved pairs - text contrast and accessibility
7. Typography - typefaces per role, in Arabic and Latin - sizes, weights and line heights for each script - digits and punctuation - fallback fonts and licences
8. Graphic elements: pattern, shapes, icons
9. Grids and layouts for the most used formats
10. Imagery: photography, illustration, 3D, AI images
11. Tone of voice, in Arabic and in English
12. Applications: stationery, signage, packaging, uniforms, screens
13. Social media templates, with seasonal versions
14. Motion: logo animation, transitions, text on screen
15. Files, contacts and change log

Conclusion

Good brand guidelines are less a book than a tool: the logo with its spacing, sizes and misuse, colour values for every medium, type for both scripts, imagery and voice, real applications, templates and motion, sized to the business and kept current by someone who owns them. Start with the essentials, add sections as the brand reaches new places, and judge every page by whether a stranger could use it.

If you need an identity with a guide your team can actually use, let's talk about your brand.