What a brand guideline should actually contain

A brand guideline is judged on one thing: whether somebody who was not in the room can apply the brand correctly without asking. Almost everything else in a typical guidelines document is decoration.

The test

Hand the document to a printer, a signwriter and whoever runs the social account. If all three can do their job from it, it works. If any of them has to email you, the document has a gap and the gap is where the brand starts to drift.

The eight sections that earn their place

1. Brand overview. Vision, mission and the values in plain language. Not because anyone reads it twice, but because every later decision needs something to be checked against.
2. Logo system. Primary mark, secondary lockup, monogram, and the formats each one is supplied in.
3. Logo usage. Clear space, minimum sizes, approved backgrounds, and a do-and-don’t page built from mistakes you have already caught.
4. Colour. Hex, RGB and print values, plus the pairings. A palette without defined pairings is a set of suggestions.
5. Typography. The families, the scale, and which weight does which job.
6. Imagery. What the photography looks like, and what it never looks like.
7. Icons and pattern. The repeating elements that make an unbranded surface recognisable.
8. Applications. Real artwork on real objects, not a floating mockup.

What to leave out

Mood boards, competitor audits, the strategy deck, and the twenty logo routes that were not chosen. Those belong in the project archive. Putting them in the guideline buries the eight things above under fifty pages of context that only matters to the people who were already there.

Length is a symptom

A short guideline is not a cheap guideline. It is usually the more expensive one, because deciding what to leave out takes longer than including everything. If a document runs long, that is generally a sign the decisions underneath it were never fully made.