What Should Brand Guidelines Include? (Checklist)

A practical checklist of what belongs in a brand guidelines document — and what makes teams ignore the one they already have.

Useful brand guidelines include logo suite and clear space, colour values in every colour space, typography and a type scale, layout and grid rules, photography and illustration direction, tone of voice with real examples, application examples, and misuse examples. Anything longer than about forty pages usually stops being used.

Most brand guidelines fail for the same reason: they describe the brand instead of telling someone what to do at 4pm on a Thursday when a banner is due. A good document is a set of decisions already made, written for non-designers.

The checklist

Logo suite — primary, stacked, horizontal, monogram, plus clear space and minimum sizes.
Colour — HEX, RGB, CMYK and Pantone, with ratios showing how much of each to use.
Typography — typefaces, licences held, weights in use, and a sized type scale.
Layout — grid, margins, and the rules that make a page look like yours.
Photography and illustration — direction, treatment, and what to avoid.
Tone of voice — three principles, each with a before-and-after example.
Applications — social, packaging, signage, email, presentations.
Misuse — the eight things people will do wrong, shown crossed out.
Access — where files live and who to ask.

Should brand guidelines cover accessibility?

Include tested colour pairings with contrast ratios. If your brand colours cannot make readable body text, say so in the document and give the approved alternative — otherwise someone will use the pale one on white and you will find out from a customer.

What should you leave out?

The mood boards. They were for the pitch, not the team.
Rejected directions.
Abstract brand-essence language nobody can act on.
Rules you are not willing to enforce.

Guidelines are judged by how often they are opened, not how good they look when closed.

FAQs

How long should brand guidelines be?

Twenty to forty pages for most businesses. Large organisations with many teams need more, but past that length the document usually becomes a reference nobody reads instead of a tool people use.

Do small businesses need brand guidelines?

Yes, but a short one. Even a six-page version covering logo, colour, type and a few misuse examples keeps a business looking consistent once more than one person starts making things.

Are brand guidelines included in a branding project?

In a full identity project they normally are. In a logo-only project they usually are not, so check the proposal — guidelines are what turns a logo into something a team can actually run.