Brand Guidelines Template: The Nine Sections and What Goes In Each One

A brand guidelines template is one document that fixes how your brand looks, sounds and behaves, so anybody producing work for you makes the same decisions you would. A complete template has nine sections: brand basics, logo and lockups, colour, typography, imagery, voice and tone, layout and spacing, applications by channel, and governance. Everything else is optional. If you want the short version, copy the outline further down this page into a document and fill it in from the work you already have.

Most brand guidelines fail for one reason. They describe taste instead of giving decisions. A designer cannot act on "our blue is warm and confident". They can act on a hex value, a Pantone reference, a minimum contrast ratio and a line saying which of your two blues wins on a dark background. Write the version somebody can follow at 6pm without asking you.

The nine sections at a glance

Brand basics

Four short entries: the audience in plain words, the positioning line (what you do, for whom, and the one thing that is different), your proof points, and the words you do not use. The last one earns its place quickly. If your category calls everything a platform and you are a tool, say so here and save fifty arguments later.

Keep this to one page. Strategy documents belong elsewhere. Guidelines exist so people can produce work, and a long preamble is the part everybody scrolls past.

Logo and lockups

This is the section people open first, so make it answer fast. Include the primary mark, the horizontal and stacked lockups, the icon or monogram for small spaces, and the single colour version for stamps, embroidery and fax quality print. Then give the rules:

• Minimum size. One number for screen in pixels, one for print in millimetres.
• Clear space. Express it as a measure inside the logo itself, for example the height of the icon, so it scales with the mark.
• Approved backgrounds. Show the mark on white, on your darkest brand colour, and on a photograph. Show the photo case twice, once working and once failing.
• What not to do. Six examples, each a real mistake somebody has already made: stretched, recoloured, outlined, rotated, drop shadowed, placed on a busy image.
• File inventory. SVG for web, EPS or PDF for print, PNG with transparency for documents, and a note that nobody should ever use a JPEG of a logo.

Colour, given as values

List every colour with HEX, RGB, CMYK and a Pantone reference if you print. Mark each one as primary, secondary or functional. Then add the two rules most palettes are missing. First, the pairs that are allowed to sit on each other, with the contrast ratio, so accessibility is settled in the document instead of in review. Aim for 4.5 to 1 on body text and 3 to 1 on large text and interface elements, which is what WCAG asks for. Second, the fallback: when a layout needs a colour that is not on the list, which existing colour does the job.

Typography

Name the typefaces, the weights you have licensed, and the licence type, because a web font licence and a desktop licence are different purchases. Give a type scale as real numbers for headings, body, captions and interface labels, plus line height and the maximum line length you want for body copy, which sits around 70 characters. Add a system font stack as the substitute for email and for anywhere the brand font will not load.

Imagery and illustration

Write the rules that would let somebody else commission a shoot. Subject matter, framing, whether people look at the camera, how much editing is allowed, the treatment applied to stock, and the crops you need for each channel. Two or three approved examples with a one line note on why each one works will teach more than a page of adjectives.

Voice and tone

Voice is constant, tone moves with the situation. Give voice as three traits, each with a short do and do not pair, written as sentences rather than adjectives. Then a tone table: how you sound in a product error, a sales email, a support reply, a hiring post, an apology. Include spelling and mechanics decisions so editors stop guessing: which English, serial commas, sentence case or title case in headings, how you write numbers, how you render your own product names.

Layout, spacing and applications

A grid and a spacing scale, usually a 4 or 8 point step, turns a brand into something that can be built. Then show the brand doing its job in the places you actually publish: website header and hero, social profile and post, a slide template, email signature, invoice, one page document, and signage or packaging if you have it. Each application needs one sentence on what matters most in that format.

Governance, the page that keeps it alive

Name the owner. Say who signs off on exceptions. Give the single location where the real files live, and delete every other copy so there is one source. Put a version number and a review date on the cover. A quarterly review takes twenty minutes and stops the slow drift where four slightly different blues are all in use and everybody is sure theirs is correct.

A copy ready outline

1. Brand basics
   1.1 Audience
   1.2 Positioning line
   1.3 Proof points
   1.4 Words we avoid
2. Logo and lockups
   2.1 Variants and when to use each
   2.2 Minimum size and clear space
   2.3 Backgrounds, allowed and not
   2.4 Misuse examples
   2.5 File inventory
3. Colour
   3.1 Palette with HEX, RGB, CMYK, Pantone
   3.2 Approved pairings and contrast ratios
   3.3 Fallback rule
4. Typography
   4.1 Typefaces, weights, licences
   4.2 Type scale and line heights
   4.3 Fallback stack
5. Imagery and illustration
6. Voice and tone
   6.1 Voice traits with do and do not
   6.2 Tone by situation
   6.3 Spelling and mechanics
7. Layout and spacing
8. Applications by channel
9. Governance
   9.1 Owner and approvals
   9.2 File location
   9.3 Version, review date

This page covers the guidelines document itself and the rules that belong in it. For the positioning and naming work that happens before a guideline exists, start from a separate strategy brief and bring the conclusions here.

What people ask about Brand Guidelines Template

How long should brand guidelines be?

Long enough to answer the decisions people make weekly, which is usually twelve to thirty pages for a small company. A two hundred page book is for organisations with licensees and franchisees. If a section is never opened, cut it at the next review.

Should it be a PDF or a website?

Both work, and the deciding factor is who uses it. A PDF travels well and survives email. A hosted page lets people copy hex values and download current files, which is why larger teams end up there. Whichever you pick, keep one authoritative version and date it.

What is the difference between a brand guideline and a style guide?

Brand guidelines cover identity: logo, colour, type, imagery, voice. A style guide usually means the editorial rules, spelling, capitalisation and terminology. Small teams put the style guide inside the guidelines as the voice and mechanics section. Larger teams split them because different people own them.

Do I need a brand guideline if we are a team of five?

Yes, and it pays off fastest at that size. Five people produce work in a dozen tools, and the document is what stops each tool developing its own version of the brand. Start with four sections, logo, colour, type and voice, then add the rest as questions come up.

How do we get people to follow it?

Make the correct thing the easy thing. Put approved templates in the tools people already use, keep the file location in one place, and answer exception requests within a day. Enforcement by memo does not hold. Enforcement by convenient template does.

One surface your guidelines do not cover yet

Brand guidelines assume a person sees your work. A growing share of buyers now ask an assistant instead, and the assistant answers in its own words, from whatever it has read about you across the web, with no access to your type scale or your tone table. Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Claude what your company does and who it is for, and you will often get four different descriptions, none of them the positioning line you agreed. That answer is a brand surface, and almost nothing in the usual brand toolkit looks at it. AI Knows Us checks what those assistants say about a business and where they got it, which gives you something your guidelines can be held against.