Brand guidelines a small team will actually use

Plenty of small organisations have paid for a brand guidelines document that nobody opens. It’s usually a long PDF, beautifully laid out, saved somewhere on a shared drive. Then a volunteer needs to make a flyer, can’t find the right logo, and grabs a blurry one from the website instead.

The problem usually isn’t the brand. It’s that the guidelines were written for a design agency, not for the three to ten people who actually make things every week. This note is how we approach brand guidelines for small businesses, not-for-profits and schools: shorter, more practical and easier to keep current.

Who the guidelines are really for

Think about who produces your materials. It might be an office manager making a newsletter, a teacher putting together a notice, a board member doing a presentation, or a casual staff member posting on social media. Most of them aren’t designers, and they’re doing it between other jobs.

Good guidelines answer the questions those people actually have, quickly:

• Which logo file do I use, and where do I get it?
• What are our colours, exactly?
• Which fonts do we use, and what if I don’t have them?
• How do we sound when we write?
• What kind of photos should I use?

If your guidelines answer those five questions on one page, they’ll get used. If the answers are spread across forty pages of brand philosophy, they won’t.

What goes on the one page

Logo

Show the main logo, a simpler version for small spaces, and a version for dark backgrounds. Say how much clear space to leave around it and the smallest size it still reads well. Most importantly, link straight to the files, in the formats people need: a vector file for printers, a PNG for documents, and an SVG for the website.

Colour

List your main colours with their codes for screen and print. Then say which combinations work for text. A colour that looks lovely as a background may be hard to read as body text. Checking contrast now, against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, saves people producing unreadable posters later. We cover the newer requirements in what WCAG 2.2 changed.

Type

Name your fonts, show headings and body text, and give a fallback for people who don’t have the brand fonts installed. Free, widely available fonts make life easier for everyone. On the website, fewer font files also means lighter pages, which is better for visitors on slow connections and uses less energy.

Voice

A few lines on how you sound, with a “we say this, not that” example or two. For many organisations this is the most useful part of the page, because everyone writes, but only some people design.

Images

Describe the kind of photos you use: real people and places rather than stock, or a particular style of illustration. Add a reminder to write alt text, and to get consent before using photos of people, especially children.

Templates do more than rules

A one-page guide is good. Ready-made templates are better. If your team makes the same five things over and over, such as a newsletter, a social post, a flyer, a letterhead and a slide deck, set those up once with the right logo, colours and fonts already in place.

People follow a template without thinking about it. They follow rules only when they remember them. Templates are also where consistency really comes from: not from a document telling people what to do, but from making the right thing the easy thing.

Keep it alive

Guidelines go stale. A new program gets its own logo, someone changes the website colours, the old files are still on the drive. A few habits help:

• Keep one master link to the guidelines and files, and share only that link.
• Give one person the job of owning it, even if it’s only a few hours a year.
• Review it once a year, or whenever something changes, like a new website or a new program.
• Delete or archive old logo files so they can’t be grabbed by mistake.

When a longer document makes sense

There are times a fuller brand book is worth it. Large organisations with many outside suppliers, franchise networks, or organisations whose brand gets licensed to partners often need more detail. If lots of people you don’t know will be producing your materials, more guidance protects you.

For most small teams, though, start with the one page. You can always add a second page later if you find people keep asking the same question.

Our rule of thumb

If someone new to your team can make a decent-looking flyer in half an hour using only your guidelines and templates, your guidelines are doing their job. If they need to ask someone, or give up and improvise, it’s time to simplify.

If you’d like help putting together guidelines and templates your team will actually use, have a look at our brand and identity work or tell us what you’re working on. We’re happy to start small.