Brand
What should a brand style guide include? Visual, voice and usage rules
Published by Zubair Afzal, responsible editor
First published Updated 5 min read
What it is for
A brand style guide does two jobs, and most only cover one
A brand style guide keeps a logo, a colour palette and a tone of voice the same, no matter who applies them. Its first job is visual: it stops a logo being stretched, recoloured or placed on a background that makes it unreadable.
Its second job gets skipped far more often. It stops the business being described three different ways: on its own website, in a listing a freelancer filled in, and in a social bio someone wrote in five minutes. That drift is quieter than a stretched logo, and costs more to fix once it has spread across pages you do not control.
Most guides only cover the first job, because visual assets are easy to hand over as files and voice rules take longer to write down.
What to include
The three parts of a brand style guide
The visual part usually exists. The other two often do not.
The visual rules
Logo files in every format needed, its clear space and minimum size, the primary and secondary colour palette with exact codes, and the typefaces for headings and body text.
The voice rules
Three or four words describing how the business sounds, a short example that sounds right and one that does not, and any words or phrases the business avoids. Content design guides such as Material Design's cover this alongside the visual system.
The usage rules
What the business never claims, what always needs a legal or compliance check before publishing, and how the business name and any registered marks should be written.
Where to start
What to put in a one-page starter guide
A small business does not need fifty pages on day one. This fits on one page and covers the decisions made most often.
- The logo, in its correct colours, with a minimum size stated
- Clear space around the logo, shown as a multiple of a letter in the mark
- The primary colour palette, with hex, RGB and CMYK codes for each
- The main heading font and the main body text font, with a free fallback for each
- Three or four words describing the tone of voice, with one example sentence
- The correct way to write the business name, including capitalisation
A starter guide compared with a full guide
Add the second column once more people touch the brand than you can personally brief.
| Dimension | Starter guide (write this first) | Full guide (add this later) |
|---|---|---|
| Logo | Files, clear space, minimum size | Lockups, co-branding rules, icon-only versions |
| Colour | Primary palette with exact codes | Secondary and tint palettes, accessibility contrast notes |
| Type | One heading font, one body font | A full type scale, web font fallbacks, licensing notes |
| Voice | Three or four words, one example | Tone by channel, a word list, example rewrites |
| Usage | How the business name is written | Claims that always need legal review, trademark and registered mark usage |
What good practice looks like
What a good style guide does, and where the decision stays with you
Good practice
- Document the visual system, the voice rules and the usage rules in one guide, not just the logo files.
- Write voice rules from real copy the business already uses well, not from a generic tone-of-voice worksheet.
- Build a one-page starter version first for a small team, and expand it as the business grows.
- Flag where a claim in existing marketing needs a legal check before it goes into the usage rules as approved.
Avoid
- Invent a brand personality that does not match how the business talks to customers today.
- Promise that a style guide alone stops every inconsistency across every freelancer and platform.
- Give legal advice on trademark usage. That sits with a trademark attorney, and the guide should say so.
- Write a fifty-page guide for a two-person team that will never open past page three.
Questions
Common questions about brand style guides
What is the minimum a brand style guide should include?
The logo with its clear space and minimum size, your two or three brand colours with their exact codes, your fonts, and three or four lines describing your tone of voice with a real example.
That is enough for a small business with one or two people producing marketing. Add sections as more people touch the brand.
Does a style guide need to cover writing, not just design?
Yes. Voice and tone drift faster than a logo, because nobody notices a slightly different tone the way they notice a stretched logo. Write down three or four words for how the business sounds, with one sentence that sounds right and one that does not.
Public style guides such as Mailchimp's cover word choice, grammar preferences and tone alongside the visual rules.
What is the difference between a brand style guide and a full brand book?
A style guide is the practical reference: logo rules, colours, fonts, voice, and how to apply them. A brand book usually adds the story behind the brand, the strategy, and examples of the identity applied across many touchpoints.
Most small and mid-sized businesses need the style guide first. The brand book matters once several teams or agencies need the thinking behind the rules.
Who should have access to the style guide?
Anyone who produces anything with the business name on it: freelancers, printers, a new social media hire and any agency you work with, not only the in-house design team.
A style guide only works if the people applying it can find it. One buried in an old email thread might as well not exist.
How often should a style guide be updated?
When something in it stops being true, such as a new secondary colour, a new product line, or a tone shift the business has already made in practice. No fixed schedule fits every business.
If updates keep happening every few months, the brand itself may still be settling, which is a different problem to solve first.
References
Sources for what should a brand style guide include
The official documents and research this page is based on. Platform rules change, so check the source before you act on a detail.
Related
Keep reading on what should a brand style guide include
- when a rebrand is the right fix
- content written in one consistent voice
- when to rebrandA style guide that no longer matches the business is one sign.
- why AI tools need one consistent description of your businessThe same consistency a style guide protects, seen from outside the business.
- writing the value proposition your voice section should carry
Start here
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