How to Write Brand Guidelines (With Free Template)

Every time someone sends a contractor a logo and gets back a design with the wrong colors, or a new hire writes social media posts that sound nothing like the brand, it costs time, money, and consistency. Brand guidelines prevent exactly that — and writing them does not require a branding agency or a design degree.

This guide walks through exactly what to include in brand guidelines, a step-by-step creation process, a free template you can fill out today, and a comparison of tools to help you build and distribute your guidelines. Whether you are a solo founder, a growing startup, or a small business handing off work to contractors, you will leave here with everything you need.

What Are Brand Guidelines — and Why Even Small Businesses Need Them

Brand guidelines (also called a brand style guide or brand book) are a reference document that defines how your brand looks, sounds, and communicates. They answer questions like: What colors are we allowed to use? How should the logo appear on a dark background? What is the right tone for our emails? Can we use emoji on social media?

Without guidelines, every designer, writer, and marketer fills in those blanks with their own judgment. The result is a brand that looks and feels inconsistent — a different shade of blue on the website, a different logo variant in the email footer, blog posts that sound upbeat and social posts that sound corporate. Customers notice this even if they cannot articulate it. It erodes trust.

Here is why small businesses and solopreneurs need this just as much as large companies:

• You work with contractors. A freelance graphic designer, a VA posting social content, a copywriter for your newsletter — each one will interpret your brand differently without guidance.
• You are building equity. A consistent brand is worth more over time. Recognition compounds when every touchpoint reinforces the same visual and verbal identity.
• You will hire eventually. Writing guidelines now means future hires can get up to speed in hours, not weeks.
• It forces clarity. The process of writing brand guidelines forces you to make decisions about your brand that you may have been leaving vague.

What to Include in Brand Guidelines

Most brand guidelines cover six core areas. Large enterprise brands may add more — brand values, tone by channel, photography art direction, illustration style, iconography — but these six will cover 95% of the decisions your team and contractors need to make.

1. Logo Usage Rules

Your logo section should cover every legitimate version of your logo and establish clear rules for how each version is used. Do not assume people will figure this out on their own.

• Primary logo: Your main logo — the one used in most situations. Show it clearly at a large size.
• Logo variants: Horizontal version, stacked version, icon-only (for small sizes or social avatars), monochrome version (one color for situations where color is not available).
• Clear space: Define the minimum empty space that must surround the logo at all times. Usually expressed as a multiple of the logo height — for example, "clear space = 1x the height of the logo icon."
• Minimum size: The smallest size at which the logo can be used without becoming illegible. Specify in pixels for digital and millimeters for print.
• Color usage: Which logo version to use on white backgrounds, dark backgrounds, colored backgrounds, and photography.
• Prohibited uses: Do not stretch the logo. Do not rotate it. Do not add drop shadows. Do not place it on a background with insufficient contrast. Show examples of what not to do.

2. Color Palette with Hex Codes

Specify every color in your brand palette with exact values across all color systems. Guessing at "close enough" is how you end up with five slightly different shades of your brand blue across different materials.

For each color, include: HEX (for digital/web), RGB, CMYK (for print), and Pantone (for large-format or branded merchandise). Designate each color's role — primary, secondary, accent, background, text, error state — so designers know when to use which.

3. Typography

Specify your brand typefaces, the hierarchy for how they are used, and the fallback fonts for situations where brand fonts are not available (like email or certain web environments).

• Primary typeface: Used for headings and display text. Name, weight variations allowed, source (Google Fonts, Adobe Fonts, licensed, etc.)
• Secondary typeface: Used for body copy and UI text. Same information.
• Type hierarchy: Define H1, H2, H3, body, caption, and label styles with size, weight, line height, and color.
• Web-safe fallbacks: "If the brand font is unavailable, use: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif."
• Prohibited fonts: Explicitly call out fonts that should never be used (Comic Sans is the obvious example, but specify any that clash with your brand).

4. Voice and Tone

Voice is consistent — it is who you are. Tone varies by situation and audience. Your brand might have a friendly, direct, no-nonsense voice. The tone might be warmer in a customer support email and more energetic in a product launch announcement, but both should still sound like the same brand.

• Define your brand voice in three to five adjectives: "Straightforward. Warm. Practical. Never condescending."
• Write out what each adjective means in practice: "Straightforward = short sentences, plain English, no jargon, no filler phrases."
• Provide side-by-side examples: "We say X, not Y." (See the Do/Don't section below.)
• Define tone by channel: more casual on social media, more precise in help docs, more personal in email.

5. Imagery Style

If photography or illustrations appear in your brand materials, define what kind of visual content is on-brand and what is not. Cover:

• Photography style: Natural light or studio? Candid or posed? Real people or anonymous? High contrast or muted tones?
• Color treatment: Do images get a color overlay? Desaturated? Consistent filter?
• Subject matter: What should images show? (Real customers, real environments, product in use, abstract textures?)
• What to avoid: Stock photo clichés, overly staged compositions, images that conflict with brand values.
• Illustrations and icons: If you use illustrations, specify the style (flat, line art, isometric, illustrated characters). Specify an icon set if one is preferred.

6. Do's and Don'ts

The most practical section in any brand guidelines document. Show real examples of what good brand application looks like, paired with the most common mistakes to avoid. This section alone prevents the majority of brand consistency errors in day-to-day use.

Step-by-Step Brand Guidelines Creation Process

Here is a practical process for writing your brand guidelines from scratch. Budget four to six hours for the first version if you already have brand assets (logo, colors, fonts). Start to finish in one sitting if possible — it is easier to complete all sections while in the same creative headspace.

1. Gather your existing assets. Logo files in all formats you have, any color codes you are already using, fonts on your website, examples of past marketing materials.
2. Audit for inconsistencies. Look at your website, social profiles, email signature, any printed materials, and recent design files. Note every place where brand elements differ. These are the gaps your guidelines need to resolve.
3. Define (or confirm) your core colors. If you do not have exact hex codes, use a color picker tool to sample them from your existing assets. Decide on a palette of three to five colors maximum.
4. Identify your fonts. Check your website's CSS or design files for the exact fonts and weights in use. If you do not love them, now is the time to standardize.
5. Write your voice descriptors. Three to five adjectives that describe how your brand communicates. Then write one paragraph describing what each looks like in practice.
6. Write the logo rules. Which version is primary? What are the prohibited uses? Document the clear space rule with a simple diagram.
7. Create the Do/Don't examples. Pull actual examples from past materials — or create simple side-by-side comparisons showing the right and wrong application of each guideline.
8. Choose a format and build it. See the tools section below for recommendations. A Notion page works well for a living document. Canva or Figma for a polished PDF.
9. Get a second set of eyes. Have one other person try to apply the guidelines to a new design task. Wherever they have questions or get confused, add more specificity.
10. Distribute and document the location. Put the link or file somewhere obvious — an onboarding doc, a pinned Slack message, the company wiki homepage.

Brand Guidelines Template (Fill in the Blanks)

Copy this structure into a Google Doc, Notion page, or Canva document to build your brand guidelines. The fields in italics are placeholders — replace them with your actual brand information.

Comparison Table: Simple vs. Standard vs. Comprehensive Guidelines

Not every business needs the same depth of brand guidelines. A freelancer working alone needs something different from a 20-person company with multiple contractors. Use this table to decide what level is right for you right now.

Free Tools for Creating Brand Guidelines

You do not need specialized software to write brand guidelines, but the right tool makes the document easier to maintain and easier for your team to use. Here are six tools worth considering, all with functional free plans.

Real Examples of What to Specify (Do's and Don'ts)

The Do/Don't section is the most practically useful part of brand guidelines. Here are examples across the key categories, using the pros-cons grid format to make the comparisons scannable.

Logo Do's and Don'ts

Color Do's and Don'ts

Voice and Tone Do's and Don'ts

Imagery Do's and Don'ts

Distributing and Enforcing Your Brand Guidelines

Brand guidelines are only useful if people actually use them. The most common failure mode is creating a thorough document and then not telling anyone where to find it — or telling people once and never mentioning it again. Here is how to ensure your guidelines get used consistently.

Where to Host Your Guidelines

The format and hosting location should match how your team actually works. Avoid emailing a PDF attachment — it goes out of date immediately and is impossible to update across all copies.

• Notion/Confluence/Google Sites: Best for companies with an existing internal wiki. Link to brand guidelines from the wiki homepage, the new hire onboarding checklist, and the design request process.
• Shared Google Drive / Dropbox folder: Include brand guidelines PDF alongside logo files and brand asset downloads. Make it a single "Brand Kit" folder that contains everything a contractor needs.
• Figma file (view-only link): For design-heavy teams, a Figma brand file with a shareable link is the most practical option — contractors can inspect exact values without the risk of editing.
• Frontify or similar brand portal: For companies where multiple agencies or external vendors work with the brand, a dedicated portal prevents the "which version is current?" confusion.

How to Introduce Guidelines to Contractors

Include a link to your brand guidelines in every creative brief, design brief, and contractor onboarding document. Make it one of the first items, not an afterthought. A brief statement helps: "Before starting, please review our brand guidelines at [link]. If anything is unclear or you encounter a use case not covered, message us before proceeding — do not guess."

For long-term contractors, schedule a brief brand review at the start of the relationship and again whenever the guidelines are updated. Fifteen minutes on a call reviewing the most important rules is more effective than sending a 20-page PDF and hoping for the best.

Keeping Guidelines Current

Brand guidelines are a living document. Every time your brand evolves — new product, new audience, brand refresh, expanded color palette — the guidelines need to reflect it. Assign one person ownership of the brand guidelines document. When a question comes up that the guidelines do not cover, add the answer to the guidelines after resolving it. Review the full document once a year minimum.

Frequently Asked Questions