What a brand guideline should contain for a small business

A brand guideline for a small business should cover who you are, how the logo is used, your colours and typefaces, the kind of imagery you use, how you write, and ready-made templates. Keep it to 8 to 20 pages so that people actually open it, and write it for the designer, freelancer or new hire who has to make something on Monday.

Why does a small business need a brand guideline?

Brands drift. The logo gets stretched in a presentation. Three shades of the same blue turn up across the website, invoices and social posts. A freelancer picks a different font. Each choice is small, and together they make the business look less sure of itself.

A guideline reduces these decisions to a short, shared set of rules. It saves time when briefing designers and printers, keeps work consistent across people and years, and makes the business look established.

What goes in the first section?

Start with the thinking behind the look, in a page or two.

• What the business does and for whom in plain words.
• Purpose and values: why you exist and what you will not compromise on.
• Positioning: how you are different from the alternatives your customers consider.
• Personality: three or four traits, with a sentence on each. For example, calm, direct, practical.

This part stops the visual rules from floating free. When someone faces a situation the guideline does not cover, they can ask what fits the personality.

How should the logo section work?

Show the logo, and show how to use it.

• The primary logo and any alternates, such as a horizontal and a stacked version, and a small icon or mark.
• Colour versions: full colour, one colour, white on dark, black on light.
• Clear space around the logo, shown with a diagram.
• Minimum size for print and screen.
• Wrong uses with examples: stretched, recoloured, placed on busy backgrounds, with effects added.
• File formats and where to find them: SVG and PNG for screen, PDF or EPS for print.

What should the colour section include?

• The primary and secondary colours, each with HEX for screen, RGB, CMYK for print, and a Pantone reference if you print with spot colours.
• A short note on proportion, such as one dominant colour, one accent, plenty of white.
• Approved combinations of text and background. Check contrast against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2: normal text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 for level AA.
• Colours for states in digital products, such as success, warning and error, if you have an app or a site with forms.

How do you set typography rules?

• One typeface for headings and one for body text is plenty. Name them, say where to get them and whether they are free to use.
• A fallback font for places where the main font will not load, such as email.
• A simple scale: sizes and weights for headings, subheadings, body and captions.
• Rules for line length, alignment and spacing, if you produce a lot of long text.

Check the font licence for the uses you need. Websites, apps, print and video can be licensed differently.

What about imagery and graphics?

Describe the style so new images match.

• Photography: subject, light, colour treatment, and whether people appear. Show good and bad examples.
• Illustration and icon style, if you use them.
• Charts and diagrams: colours, labels, and line weight.
• Where to find approved images, and where not to. Stock photos that look generic hurt credibility.

How do you write down the tone of voice?

Voice is part of the brand, and it often gets skipped.

• A short description of how the business sounds: for example, plain, specific and warm.
• Words you use and words you avoid.
• A few examples of the same message written well and written badly.
• Rules for names and spelling: how to write the company name, whether you use Indian English spelling, how to write dates and currency.
• How to address the customer.

Which templates should you include?

A guideline is only as useful as what it helps people make. Add or link:

• Letterhead, invoice and quotation templates.
• A presentation template and a pitch deck master.
• Email signature.
• Social media profile and post templates.
• Business card and any standard print items.
• A simple page showing how the brand appears on the website.

Where people can edit a template in tools they already use, such as Google Slides, Canva or Word, the guideline gets used.

What should you leave out?

• Long history of the company that does not affect decisions.
• Rules nobody can follow, such as 40 colours.
• Pages of theory with no examples.
• Anything that contradicts the way you actually work.

If a rule is routinely broken, change the rule or the practice.

What are the trade-offs?

A strict guideline protects consistency and can feel limiting. Allow room for context: social media can be looser than a contract.

A short guideline is easy to follow and does not cover every case. That is acceptable. Update it when a question comes up three times.

A guideline built before the brand has settled can be wrong within a year. If you are early, make a one-page version and expand it later.

Where does TechSum fit?

We create identity systems and the guidelines that go with them, from logo to pitch deck, and we make sure the same look carries through to the website and applications we build. See the Brand and Identity pillar. If you already have a website, the free health check shows how it is performing today, and the Digital Health Check puts the findings in a short written report.