Organised by Question
What people look up, not what a designer wants to explain.
Brand Guidelines Services
Brand Guidelines Services That Produce a Document People Use
Most brand guidelines are eighty pages, beautifully produced, and consulted twice. Brand guidelines services should produce something different: a document organised around the questions people actually have when they are making something, with the assets attached where they are needed.
We Write for the Person Making Something
Guidelines fail when they describe the identity instead of answering questions about using it.
Assets Attached
Files where the rule is, not in a separate archive nobody can find.
Real Examples
Including what not to do, which is the part people check.
Covers the Awkward Cases
Social avatars, email signatures, a logo on a photograph.
Short Enough to Read
Length is not thoroughness.
Guidelines, Explained
What Do People Actually Look Up?
Four things, and none requires a page about brand values.
Discuss Your Guidelines →- 1
Which Logo File?
For this background, at this size, in this format.
- 2
Which Colour?
The exact value, for screen or print.
- 3
What Type?
Which face, at what size, and what if it is unavailable.
- 4
Can I Do This?
The edge case they are about to attempt.
What a Guidelines Project Covers
The rules that are needed, with the files attached.
The identity itself is covered by brand identity.
How We Build Guidelines
Find out what people get wrong, then write the document that prevents it.
Find the Failures
What is currently being done wrong, and why.
List the Questions
What people need to look up.
Write the Answers
Organised by question rather than by element.
Attach the Files
Assets where the rule is.
Test It
Give it to someone and watch them find something.
Usability
Why Eighty Pages Guarantees It Is Not Read
Guidelines are reference documents, and reference documents are used by search rather than by reading.
What does a long document cost?
Nobody reads it, which is fine — reference documents are not meant to be read. The problem is that length makes finding things harder, and finding things is the entire purpose.
Someone about to put the logo on a dark photograph has one question. If the answer takes four minutes to locate, they will guess instead.
A shorter document organised by question gets used. A long one organised by element gets opened once, admired, and never referenced again.
Why include what not to do?
Because misuse examples are what people actually check. Someone about to stretch a logo or recolour it looks for permission, and a clear prohibition is faster to interpret than an inferred rule.
It also makes the rules concrete. "Maintain the proportions" is abstract; a picture of a stretched logo with a line through it is not.
The examples should come from real misuse where possible — the things your organisation has actually done wrong, which are the things it will do again.
Questions,answered.
Brand guidelines services produce the reference document for using a brand — logo usage, colour, typography, imagery and applications — organised around the questions people have when making something.
Short enough that finding an answer takes seconds. Length is not thoroughness — a long document organised by element gets admired once and never referenced.
Which logo file for this background, the exact colour value, which typeface at what size, and whether a specific thing they are about to do is allowed.
Yes — they are the section people check. Someone about to stretch or recolour a logo is looking for permission, and a clear prohibition is faster than an inferred rule.
It needs its own section, because avatars and feed content behave differently from print — see social media branding.
Still deciding if brand guidelines services is right for you?
Talk to UsThey Guessed Instead
Someone needs to put the logo on a dark photograph for a presentation due in twenty minutes. They open the brand guidelines to check which version to use.
The document is eighty pages. Logo usage begins on page nine and continues, through clear space, minimum sizes and co-branding, to page twenty-three. The answer about photographic backgrounds is in there somewhere.
They scroll for a minute, then use whichever file is already on their desktop. The rule existed, it was correct, and it was harder to find than to ignore.
Free Review
Find Out Whether Your Guidelines Get Used
Send us your current guidelines. We will tell you what someone can find in them and what they will guess at.
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