Brand Style Guide: What Goes in It, From One Page to the Full Version

A brand style guide is the document that tells anyone making something for your business which logo file to use, which colors and fonts, how the business writes and what its photos look like. For a small business, a useful guide can start as a single page and grow only as more people begin to use it.

You will also see it called brand guidelines or a brand book; at this size, they are the same document.

It also answers a question people search for, “what is a brand style?”: the repeatable look and voice that make a post, a van and an invoice feel like the same company. The guide is where that style gets written down, so it no longer lives only in the owner’s head.

The one-page version

Start here if you have a logo and a few colors but nothing written down. One page, six blocks:

1. Logo files: which version goes on light backgrounds, which on dark ones, and the square icon, each with its file name.
2. Colors: three to five, each with its code for screens (HEX) and for print (CMYK), plus a Pantone reference if your printer uses spot colors.
3. Fonts: one for headings and one for text, plus a fallback for tools that do not have them.
4. Voice: three words that describe how you sound, each with one sentence you would say and one you would not.
5. Photos: three rules, such as daylight only, real customers or none, and what never appears in the frame.
6. Approvals: who signs off on anything new before it is printed or posted.

The pieces themselves (name, logo versions, palette, type, imagery and voice) are explained one by one in our article on brand identity elements. The style guide is the page that records what you decided about each of them.

What the full guide adds

Once a print shop, a sign maker, a web developer and a social media manager are all working from your files, one page stops being enough. A fuller guide usually adds these sections:

• Logo rules: the clear space around the logo, the smallest size at which it is still legible, and a short list of what not to do, such as stretching it, recoloring it or placing it on a busy photo.
• Color proportions: which color dominates, which is only an accent, and which pairings are allowed for text because they pass a contrast check (the rule is explained in our piece on the elements of a brand identity).
• Type hierarchy: sizes and weights for headlines, subheads and body text, on screen and in print.
• Voice in practice: how the business answers a complaint, how it announces a promotion and which words it avoids.
• Photo and video direction: light, framing, people, and how the logo appears at the end of a video.
• Templates: a social post, a flyer, an email signature and a quote layout, so nobody starts from a blank page.

Each of these sections exists to prevent a mistake most owners have already seen at least once: a stretched logo on a banner, a flyer in a font nobody chose, a caption that sounds like a different business.

The specs sheet: sizes each channel asks for

This is the page most guides leave out, and the one a new hire needs on the first day. The table lists what each platform publishes about its images, so the files in your brand folder can be exported at the right size once instead of resized every time.

Google’s help page adds a detail worth copying into the guide: if a profile’s logo does not appear, check that the name, a valid address, categories, phone number and opening hours are all filled in.

Platforms revise these numbers from time to time. Put the date you checked them at the top of the sheet, and recheck once a year or whenever an upload looks cropped.

Writing rules that keep the name and details consistent

Voice is how you sound; writing rules are the small details that make a business look careful. Put them on the same page as the voice:

• the business name exactly as it appears on the sign and the Google profile, plus any short form you allow;
• how you write your town and service area, for example “Mount Pleasant, SC” or “the Charleston area”;
• one phone format and one public email address;
• how service names are capitalized, so “Deep Cleaning” on one flyer is not “deep clean” on the next;
• your rules for emoji and hashtags.

Social media is where these rules get tested most often. Our step-by-step guide to Instagram captions shows the voice part applied to real posts.

Where the guide lives and who keeps it current

A guide buried in someone’s inbox gets forgotten. Three habits keep it in use:

• One shared folder with the guide and every file it mentions, named so a stranger can find them, such as logo-horizontal-dark-background.png or facebook-cover-851×315.jpg.
• One owner who approves changes, and a version date on the first page.
• A review whenever something changes: a new service, a new location, a new platform or a refreshed logo.

Who should get a copy

Send the guide, with the folder link, to everyone who makes something with your name on it:

• the print shop and the sign or vehicle-wrap company;
• whoever builds or edits the website;
• the person or agency posting on your social media;
• employees who answer messages and reviews;
• partners who mention you in their own marketing.

If the files the guide should point to do not exist yet, the logo project is where they come from. What a good one hands over, including a short usage guide and a written transfer of the rights, is listed on our logo and brand identity design page.