Brand guidelines explainedBrand guidelines: what they are and what goes in them.
Brand guidelines, or a brand style guide, are the short rulebook that keeps your business looking like itself everywhere.
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The short answer
What are brand guidelines?
Brand guidelines are a document that shows how a brand looks and how to use it correctly: the logo and its versions, the colours, the typefaces, and the do and do-not rules for putting them together. A brand style guide and brand guidelines mean the same thing in everyday use.
For a large company the document can run to dozens of pages. For a small business a short, clear one is enough, as long as someone outside the business could follow it without asking you a question.
Who needs them
Anyone who hands the brand to somebody else.
The moment a freelancer builds your website, a printer produces your menus or a new hire designs a social post, your brand is in someone else's hands. Without guidelines they guess: they stretch the logo to fit a space, put it on a clashing colour or pick a font that is close enough.
A style guide turns those guesses into answers. It is also the quickest way to keep a business consistent as it grows from one person to several.
What goes in
The ten sections of an ELRO style guide.
This is the structure of the style guide in every ELRO brand pack. It is a sound outline for brand guidelines of any size.
- 1
Brand overview
Who the brand is and how it should feel, in a page.
- 2
Logo layouts and variations
Horizontal, stacked and symbol, and which version to use on light, dark and busy backgrounds.
- 3
Symbol
The symbol on its own, and when to use it.
- 4
Clear space
The breathing room to leave around the logo.
- 5
Minimum size
The smallest the logo can go and stay clear.
- 6
Colour palette
Each colour with its name, HEX and RGB.
- 7
Typography
Your typefaces, how to use them, and safe fallbacks.
- 8
Background usage
What works on which background colour.
- 9
Incorrect usage
Common mistakes to avoid, such as stretching or recolouring.
- 10
Digital usage
Using your brand on screens: web, social and email.
What it prevents
Five mistakes that make a brand look inconsistent.
Stretching or squashing the logo
Fitting a logo to a space by pulling one side distorts it. Guidelines say to resize proportionally and show a version made for wide spaces.
The wrong version on a dark background
A logo designed for white can disappear on dark photography. A reversed version solves it, if people know it exists.
Recolouring to match a campaign
Swapping brand colours for a seasonal look slowly teaches customers that you have no look at all.
Shrinking below legibility
Every logo has a smallest size. Below it the detail fills in. Guidelines state the minimum.
Almost the right font
A similar typeface looks fine on its own and wrong next to the real one. Guidelines name the fonts and a safe fallback.
Getting one
Build your own, or have it built from your design.
You can write guidelines yourself: collect your logo versions, record your colours with exact HEX and RGB values, name your fonts, and add a page of examples of what not to do. The hard part is not the writing. It is that the logo versions and the colour values have to exist first.
ELRO builds the style guide from your approved design, never redrawn, so every page matches the files in the pack. You tap what you like, approve a concept, and the guide is made as part of the pack.
Questions, answered.
What is the difference between brand guidelines and a style guide?
In everyday use, nothing. Both describe how a brand looks and how to use it. Some companies use the term brand guidelines for the full rulebook, including tone of voice, and style guide for the visual part.
Do small businesses need brand guidelines?
If anyone other than you ever makes something with your brand on it, yes. A short guide stops the logo, colours and fonts drifting as the business grows.
What file format should brand guidelines be in?
A PDF is the usual choice because it looks the same on every device and is easy to send to printers, developers and freelancers. The ELRO style guide is a PDF.
Does an ELRO brand pack include brand guidelines?
Yes. The style guide is the heart of the pack, and every other file in the download is made from the same approved design.
Do the guidelines include tone of voice?
The ELRO style guide covers the visual brand. It does not write your tone of voice.
Design your brand by looking.
Tap what you like. ELRO does the designing.
Design free, pay when you approve.