You paid for a logo. You received a folder of files, maybe a PNG, an SVG, and a JPEG of the logo on a white background. Six months later your printer asks for a Pantone reference, your web developer asks for the heading font, and a freelancer sends back a social post with your logo stretched sideways in the wrong blue.
That gap is exactly what a brand style guide closes. This article answers the question what is included in a brand style guide the way a studio actually builds one: section by section, page by page, with a description of what each spread should physically contain and why it prevents an expensive mess later.
Quick answer: what is included in a brand style guide
A brand style guide is a document (usually a PDF, sometimes a web page) that sets the rules for how your brand looks, sounds, and is applied. At minimum it contains brand foundations, logo usage rules, a colour palette with exact codes, a typography system, imagery direction, iconography and layout rules, tone of voice, and an asset library.
| Section | What it prevents | Typical pages |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Cover, version and contents | People using an outdated file | 2 |
| 2. Brand foundations | Off-brief creative from new hires and agencies | 2 to 4 |
| 3. Logo suite and construction | Cramped, tiny or wrong-format logos | 3 to 5 |
| 4. Logo misuse | Stretching, recolouring, drop shadows | 1 to 2 |
| 5. Colour palette and codes | Print that does not match the website | 2 to 3 |
| 6. Typography and type scale | Ten different fonts across your channels | 2 to 4 |
| 7. Imagery and art direction | Random stock photos that cheapen the brand | 2 to 4 |
| 8. Iconography, graphics and layout | Messy spacing and mismatched icons | 2 to 3 |
| 9. Tone of voice and copy rules | A brand that looks consistent but reads like three companies | 2 to 4 |
Below, each section is broken down into what should actually appear on the page, plus the exact wording you can use when asking your designer for it. Brand Guidelines: Defining the Look and Feel tackles the same question from another angle.
1. Cover page, version control and contents
The least glamorous section and the one most often skipped. Without it, three versions of your guide circulate at once and nobody knows which is current.
What the page should contain
- Brand name and the words Brand Guidelines or Brand Style Guide
- A version number and date, for example v2.1, March 2026
- Who owns the document and who to contact for approvals or new assets
- A clickable table of contents with page numbers
Ask your designer for this
“Please include a version number, release date, and a contact for asset requests on the cover.”
2. Brand foundations: story, values, positioning and audience
This is the short strategic preamble that explains why the visual rules exist. A designer or copywriter who reads two pages here makes better decisions on everything that follows.
What the pages should contain
- Brand story: three to six sentences on origin, purpose and what you do differently
- Mission and vision: one line each, not a paragraph
- Values: three to five words, each with a single explanatory sentence
- Positioning statement: for [audience], [brand] is the [category] that [benefit], because [reason to believe]
- Audience snapshot: one or two primary audiences with their motivations, not full personas
- Brand personality: adjectives with the opposite pole, for example “warm, not chummy” or “precise, not clinical”
Keep this tight. A foundations section that runs fifteen pages never gets read, and the rules that matter get buried.
3. Logo suite and construction rules
This is the heart of most guides and the section that saves you the most money. It is not one page showing the logo. It is a set of rules that answer every situation someone will face.
What the pages should contain
- Primary logo: shown large, on the correct background, with a caption explaining when it is the default choice
- Logo variations: horizontal lockup, stacked lockup, icon or symbol only, and a wordmark only version
- Colourways: full colour, single colour black, single colour white (reversed), and a one-colour version for embroidery or engraving
- Clear space: the exclusion zone drawn on the page, defined by a measurement that scales, for example “clear space equals the height of the letter D in the wordmark”
- Minimum sizes: separate figures for print (in mm) and screen (in px), for example 20 mm wide in print, 90 px wide on screen
- Backgrounds: approved placements on brand colours, on white, on dark, and over photography, including the rule for when a photo is too busy
- Co-branding and partner lockups: how your logo sits next to a partner or sponsor mark, with the dividing rule and spacing
Why it matters
Without clear space and minimum size rules, your logo ends up jammed against the edge of a trade show banner or reproduced so small on a business card that the icon turns to mush. Both cost money to reprint.
4. Logo misuse: the page of things nobody should do
A dedicated spread showing the logo being used incorrectly, each example crossed out with a red X and a one-line caption. It feels negative, but it is the page people screenshot and send to contractors. The subject deserves a deeper dive than we can give it here.
The misuses worth illustrating
- Stretching or squashing (non-proportional scaling)
- Rotating or tilting
- Recolouring outside the palette
- Adding drop shadows, outlines, bevels or glows
- Placing the colour logo on a low-contrast background
- Rearranging the lockup or changing the gap between icon and wordmark
- Retyping the wordmark in a similar font
- Placing the logo inside a shape that is not part of the identity
- Cropping the mark unless a defined “cropped device” rule exists
5. Colour palette with exact codes
Colour is where inconsistency becomes most visible to customers, and where the difference between a good and bad guide shows up fast. Naming a colour “navy” is useless. Every colour needs its full set of values.
What the page should contain
| Name | HEX | RGB | CMYK | Pantone | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Driftwood Ink | #1C2A33 | 28, 42, 51 | 85, 65, 50, 45 | PMS 5463 C | Primary, body text, 60% of surface |
| Tide | #4E8A8B | 78, 138, 139 | 70, 30, 40, 5 | PMS 5483 C | Secondary, buttons and links |
| Sand | #EDE6DA | 237, 230, 218 | 7, 7, 14, 0 | PMS 7527 C | Backgrounds, 30% of surface |
| Ember | #D9622B | 217, 98, 43 | 10, 75, 95, 0 | PMS 159 C | Accent only, max 10% of surface |
Beyond the swatch table, a strong colour section also includes:
- Proportion guidance, often a 60 / 30 / 10 bar showing how much of each colour should appear in a layout
- Approved combinations: which text colour goes on which background
- Accessibility contrast ratios: WCAG AA requires 4.5:1 for body text and 3:1 for large text, so the guide should mark which pairings pass
- Tints and shades if the brand uses them, with their own hex values rather than “use 40% opacity”
- Functional colours for digital products: success, warning, error
Ask your designer for this
“Please supply HEX, RGB, CMYK and Pantone coated references for every palette colour, plus contrast ratios for text pairings.”
6. Typography system and type scale
Most inconsistency complaints trace back to type. Someone does not have the font, so they substitute one, and within a year your brand has five typefaces.
What the pages should contain
- Primary typeface with full character set shown, and the specific weights you licensed
- Secondary typeface and the rule for when it is used
- Licence details: where the font was bought, what the licence covers (desktop, web, app), and how many seats. This one line prevents a legal headache
- System fallbacks: what to use in Google Docs, email signatures, PowerPoint and client-side templates where the brand font is not installed
- A type scale with sizes, weights, line height and letter spacing for each level
- Alignment and paragraph rules: ragged right by default, no justified text, maximum line length around 70 characters
| Level | Font and weight | Size (web) | Line height | Tracking |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| H1 | Primary, Bold | 48 px | 1.1 | -2% |
| H2 | Primary, Semibold | 32 px | 1.2 | -1% |
| H3 | Primary, Semibold | 24 px | 1.3 | 0 |
| Body | Secondary, Regular | 17 px | 1.6 | 0 |
| Caption | Secondary, Medium | 13 px | 1.4 | +3% |
7. Imagery and art direction
This is the section most often missing from cheap guides, and the one that decides whether your brand looks considered or generic. Rules alone are not enough here. The page needs pictures.
What the pages should contain
- A mood board of six to twelve approved reference images that define the look
- Written direction covering subject matter, lighting (natural, directional, soft), colour temperature, depth of field and whether people look at the camera
- Composition rules: crop tightly, leave negative space top left for headlines, avoid centred symmetry, and so on
- A do and do not grid: approved images on the left, rejected images on the right with a caption explaining the rejection, for example “too saturated, staged smiles, artificial studio light”
- Treatment rules: any duotone, grain, or colour overlay, with the exact settings so it can be repeated
- Illustration style if you use one: stroke weight, corner radius, palette, level of detail
- Sourcing notes: preferred stock libraries, licence requirements, and a reminder about attribution
If your guide only says “use authentic, natural imagery”, it does not work. Every stock library in existence is tagged “authentic”. Show the pictures.
8. Iconography, graphic devices and layout
The connective tissue that makes a layout recognisably yours even when the logo is not visible.
What the pages should contain
- Icon set: the style (line or filled), stroke weight, corner radius, grid size (commonly 24 px), and where to source new icons that match
- Graphic devices: patterns, shapes, arcs, textures or rules taken from the logo, with instructions on scale and placement
- Grid and spacing: column grid for print and web, margins, and a spacing scale such as 4, 8, 16, 24, 32, 48 px
- Button and UI basics if you have a website or app: corner radius, padding, states
- Applied examples: a business card, an email signature, a social post, a slide, a signage mockup, a packaging or letterhead example
Those applied examples matter more than people expect. When a team member is unsure, they copy the example rather than read the rule.
9. Tone of voice and copy rules
A brand can be visually perfect and still feel incoherent because the website sounds formal, the Instagram sounds like a teenager, and the invoices sound like a legal notice. The voice section fixes that.
What the pages should contain
- Three or four voice attributes, each with a “we are / we are not” pair, for example “Direct, not blunt”
- Before and after rewrites: the same sentence written off-brand and on-brand. This is the single most useful element on the page
- Channel adjustments: how the voice shifts between a landing page, an email, a support reply and a LinkedIn post
- Vocabulary list: words to use, words to avoid, how to refer to your product, customers and team
- Grammar and mechanics: sentence case or title case for headings, Oxford comma or not, date and number formats, how to write times and currency
- Boilerplate: the 25 word, 50 word and 100 word descriptions of your company for press and directories
- Legal lines: trademark symbols, disclaimers, copyright line format
The bonus section: asset library and governance
Nine sections cover the rules. One more page makes them usable. Ask for a final spread that lists:
- A link to the master folder of logo files in SVG, EPS, PNG (transparent) and PDF
- Font files or purchase links
- Editable templates: letterhead, slide deck, social sizes, email signature
- Favicon and app icon exports
- Who approves new applications and how to request an asset
- The review date for the guide, typically every 12 to 24 months
What to send your designer if you only received a logo
If you are reading this because you have a logo and nothing else, here is a message you can copy, adapt and send:
Hi, thanks again for the logo work. Before we roll it out, could you supply a short brand style guide? I need: logo variations and colourways, clear space and minimum size, a logo misuse page, full colour codes (HEX, RGB, CMYK, Pantone), typography with a type scale and licence details, imagery direction with example references, icon and spacing rules, and a one page tone of voice summary. A PDF plus a folder of source files in SVG, EPS and PNG would be ideal. Could you let me know the cost and timeline?
Red flags in a weak guide
- Colours listed as HEX only, with no CMYK or Pantone
- Fonts named but no licence information or fallback
- No logo misuse page
- No minimum size or clear space
- Imagery described in adjectives with no example photos
- Logo delivered as JPEG or PNG only, with no vector file
- No version number or date anywhere in the document
How long should a brand style guide be?
| Business type | Typical length | Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Solo founder or new small business | 6 to 12 pages | Logo, colour, type, a voice summary |
| Growing SME with a marketing team | 20 to 40 pages | All nine sections plus templates |
| Multi-product or multi-market brand | 50 to 100+ pages, or a web portal | Sub-brand architecture, motion, UI library |
Longer is not better. The best guide is the shortest one that answers the questions your team actually asks.
Frequently asked questions
What do style guides contain?
A brand style guide contains brand foundations (story, values, positioning), logo usage and misuse rules, a colour palette with HEX, RGB, CMYK and Pantone codes, a typography system with a type scale, imagery and art direction, iconography and layout rules, tone of voice guidance, and a list of downloadable brand assets. Editorial style guides are narrower and cover writing mechanics only.
What are some examples of brand style guides?
Widely referenced public examples include the guidelines published by organisations such as the BBC, Spotify, Uber, Mailchimp (particularly strong on tone of voice) and the University of Oxford. Archive sites that collect historical and current brand manuals are also useful references. Look at two or three, then build the version that fits your size rather than copying an enterprise document.
What are the 7 pillars of branding?
They are commonly described as purpose, positioning, personality, promise, perception, people and presentation. A style guide is where the last two become practical: how the brand is presented and how people apply it consistently. An in-depth look at it is worth the time.
How much should a brand guide cost?
As a rough guide for 2026, a concise one-page or mini guide added to a logo project often runs between 300 and 900 EUR. A full guide covering all nine sections for a small or mid-sized business typically falls between 1,200 and 4,000 EUR. Large multi-brand systems with digital components run well beyond that. If a designer delivered a logo without documentation, ask whether a guide can be added as a follow-on project, since the thinking is already done and it is usually cheaper than commissioning it from scratch later.
Should a brand style guide be a PDF or a website?
Start with a PDF. It is easy to email to a printer, a freelancer or a supplier. If your team grows past roughly ten people, or you update assets frequently, move to a hosted brand portal so nobody works from an outdated file.
How often should it be updated?
Review it every 12 to 24 months, and immediately after any of these: a new website, a new product line, entering a new market, or the addition of a channel the guide does not cover. Always increment the version number and note what changed.
Final thought
A logo is an asset. A brand style guide is the instruction manual that keeps that asset worth something in three years, after fifty people have touched it. If you have the first but not the second, you do not need to rebrand. You need documentation, and now you know exactly what to ask for.
Need a style guide built around a logo you already own? Get in touch with the team at Driftwood Editions and we will audit what you have, then document the rest.