How to Write Brand Identity Guidelines
The eight sections a set of brand identity guidelines needs, and what research on goals, plans, defaults and choice says about writing rules that people follow.
Answer to the question
How to write brand identity guidelines?
Brand identity guidelines are written rules for using a brand's name, logo, colour, type, imagery and voice. Good ones open with purpose and positioning, give exact specifications and a default for each element, show do and don't examples, and name an owner and a review date.
Key takeaways
- Brand identity guidelines usually cover eight sections: purpose and positioning, logo, colour, typography, imagery, voice and tone, do and don't examples, and governance.
- Edwin Locke and Gary Latham reviewed thirty-five years of research in 2002 and found that specific, difficult goals generally produced higher performance than an instruction to do one's best.
- Peter Gollwitzer and Veronika Brandstätter found in 1997 that students who chose a time and place for a task were far more likely to complete it within two days, twelve of seventeen against six of nineteen.
- Brigitte Madrian and Dennis Shea reported in 2001 that retirement plan participation was much higher under automatic enrolment, and many employees kept the default settings.
- Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper found in 2000 that nearly 30 per cent of shoppers who stopped at a six-jam display bought, against 3 per cent at a twenty-four-jam display.
Brand identity guidelines are opened under pressure. The reader is a designer with a brief due, a printer waiting for artwork or a new colleague building a first slide, and almost none of them wrote the document. What they need has to be found in a minute. Writing brand identity guidelines for that reader, and not for the people who commissioned the work, changes what goes in and how each rule is worded. Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein argue in Nudge that anyone who arranges the choices another person faces is a choice architect, and that no arrangement is neutral. A guidelines document arranges the choices of everyone who lays out the next page.
What Brand Identity Guidelines Contain
Most sets of brand identity guidelines run through the same eight sections, whatever the size of the business. They open with a short statement of purpose and positioning, so that a reader who meets a case the document does not cover can reason from the brand's intent. Then come the visible assets in the order a newcomer needs them: logo, colour, type and imagery. Voice and tone follow, because words are produced by more people than pictures are. Worked examples of right and wrong use come next, and governance closes the document by saying who owns it and how it changes.
The table sets out what each section settles and what a usable rule in it looks like. Every rule shown is a generic illustration written for this article, not taken from a real brand.
| Section | What it settles | A usable rule looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose and positioning summary | What the brand stands for and for whom | A half-page statement and three words that describe the manner |
| Logo | Versions, clear space, minimum size, forbidden changes | A master version, a one-colour version, a space equal to the height of one letter, and a smallest size in millimetres and pixels |
| Colour | Roles, exact values, pairings | One primary colour, two secondaries and three neutrals, each with a named job and values for print and screen |
| Typography | Families, sizes, hierarchy | One family for headlines, one for text, and a size ladder for titles, subheads and body |
| Imagery | Subject, framing, light, treatment | Three sentences on what the pictures show and how they are shot, with six approved sample images |
| Voice and tone | Register, preferred words, sample lines | Short sentences, plain words, and a sample line for a greeting, an apology and an announcement |
| Do and don't examples | The boundary of the rules | Paired images, one correct and one flawed, each with a single-sentence reason |
| Governance | Owner, approvals, updates | A named owner, a request route, a version number and a review date |
The order matters less than the completeness of each row. A section that states a preference without a specification gives the reader nothing to apply, which is the problem the next part takes up.
Why Vague Rules Get Ignored
In brand identity guidelines, a rule such as use the logo with generous space around it asks the reader to supply the number. Each reader supplies a different one, and the page ends up inconsistent even though everybody followed the guidance. Goal-setting research gives a parallel. Edwin Locke and Gary Latham reviewed thirty-five years of studies and found that specific, difficult goals generally produced higher performance than an instruction to do one's best. Goals worked by directing attention, effort, persistence and strategy, and they worked better when feedback came with them.
That research concerned work goals, not design rules, so the carry-over is an interpretation. A rule that names its measure behaves like a specific goal: the reader knows what done looks like and can check it. Where the guidance says the clear space equals the height of one letter of the mark, the check takes seconds. Where it says generous, no check exists.
Specific rules also help at the moment of use. Peter Gollwitzer and Veronika Brandstätter studied plans that name when and where an action will begin. In one experiment, student volunteers were asked to write a report on Christmas Eve within two days. Twelve of seventeen who had chosen a time and place for it, and committed to the plan in writing, wrote within the window, against six of nineteen who had made no plan. A survey in the same paper found the planning difference was large for difficult projects and small for easy ones.
Brand identity guidelines can borrow the form of such plans by attaching each rule to the situation that triggers it. When a layout includes the logo on a photograph, use the reversed version. When a headline runs past two lines, drop to the next size on the ladder. Rules framed this way are applied in the moment, because the reader does not have to remember the rule and then decide whether it applies.
Clear Defaults and the Limits of Choice
People often keep whatever option is already in place. Brigitte Madrian and Dennis Shea studied retirement saving and found that participation was much higher when enrolment was automatic, and that many employees kept the default contribution rate and fund even though few would have chosen them. They attribute the pattern to inertia and to employees reading the default as a recommendation. In Nudge, Thaler and Sunstein list defaults among the main tools of a choice architect and pair them with a plain principle: make the desired action easy.
For brand identity guidelines, the lesson is to decide the default for every element and make it the easiest thing to reach. The master logo should be the file that opens first in the asset folder. The default typeface should be the one already loaded in the templates. The default colour pairing should be the one the slide template uses before anyone touches it. Alternatives exist for real needs, but each needs a stated reason and a named person who can approve it.
Defaults also reduce the number of decisions a busy reader takes on. A ready template for a poster, a slide deck, a social post and a letter covers most of what a business produces, and the guidelines then explain the template instead of asking each reader to rebuild it from rules.
More options are not always better for the person choosing. Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper ran a tasting display in a supermarket on two Saturdays, with six jams one day and twenty-four the next. Sixty per cent of passers-by stopped at the larger display and forty per cent at the smaller one. Nearly thirty per cent of those who stopped at the smaller display bought a jar, against three per cent at the larger. Two further studies, using essay topics and chocolates, compared six options with thirty.
The setting is far from a design office, so the result is a prompt for editing and not a forecast. A set of brand identity guidelines that offers twenty-four colours, six logo variants and four type families invites the same hesitation. Six or fewer in each category is a workable target, and where a variant has a single use, it belongs in an appendix beside that use.
Length follows the same logic. A twelve-page core document that everyone reads does more for consistency than a hundred-page manual that nobody opens. Most readers need the first two pages, so the one-page summary, with the logo, colours, type and three voice words, deserves the best position in the file.
Keeping Brand Identity Guidelines Alive
A document that is correct on the day it ships becomes wrong as channels, formats and staff change. Governance is what prevents that, and it needs only four things written down: an owner, a route for requests, a version number and a review date. The owner answers questions in a day. The request route lets someone ask for an exception or a new format without improvising one. The version number tells every reader which edition they hold, and the review date puts a recurring prompt in the calendar.
Thaler and Sunstein also name feedback as a tool of choice architecture, and guidelines gain from it. Approved work added to a shared gallery shows readers what good application looks like, and a short log of the questions asked each quarter shows which rules are unclear. Each repeated question marks a sentence that needs rewriting or an example that is missing.
The if-then form works here too. When a new channel opens, its specification is added within a set number of days. When a rule keeps being bent for the same reason, the rule is reviewed. Retired examples are removed so the document never shows two ways of doing one thing. How a full identity system is assembled before the guidelines are written is covered in How to Build a Brand Identity System, and the plain definitions of the underlying terms are in What Is Brand Identity (Beginner's Guide). The strategy the guidelines rest on is set out in What Is Brand Strategy? With Examples.
A Working Order for the Writer
Writing brand identity guidelines goes faster in a fixed order, and each step feeds the next.
1. Start with the positioning summary, since it governs every later judgment.
2. Specify the logo, colour and type, giving each a number, a name and a default.
3. Add the voice and imagery sections, each with samples.
4. Write the paired do and don't examples, drawn from mistakes the team has made or can imagine.
5. Finish with governance, then hand the draft to someone who did not help write it and ask them to produce a simple layout using only the document. Every question they ask marks a rule to sharpen before release.
Common questions
How to write brand identity guidelines?
To write brand identity guidelines, cover eight sections: a purpose and positioning summary, logo rules, colour, typography, imagery, voice and tone, do and don't examples, and governance. Each section should give exact specifications, a default and a named owner for exceptions.
How long should brand identity guidelines be?
Length should follow the reader's needs. A short core document of about a dozen pages, with a one-page summary at the front, serves most teams. Rarely used variants and technical files can sit in an appendix.
Why do people ignore brand identity guidelines?
Common reasons are vague wording, too many options, no default to start from and no one to ask. Specific rules, ready templates, a short core document and a named owner remove most of those obstacles.
How often should brand identity guidelines be updated?
Set a recurring review date when the document is issued, and update sooner when a new channel opens or a rule is bent repeatedly. A version number shows readers which edition is current.
Sources
Thaler, R. H., & Sunstein, C. R. Nudge: The Final Edition. Seed book; vault hub Books/Nudge.
Locke, E. A., & Latham, G. P. (2002). “Building a practically useful theory of goal setting and task motivation: A 35-year odyssey.” American Psychologist, 57(9). doi:10.1037/0003-066X.57.9.705 https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.57.9.705
Gollwitzer, P. M., & Brandstätter, V. (1997). “Implementation intentions and effective goal pursuit.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73(1). doi:10.1037/0022-3514.73.1.186 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.73.1.186
Madrian, B. C., & Shea, D. F. (2001). “The power of suggestion: Inertia in 401(k) participation and savings behavior.” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(4). doi:10.1162/003355301753265543 https://doi.org/10.1162/003355301753265543
Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. R. (2000). “When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79(6). doi:10.1037/0022-3514.79.6.995 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.79.6.995