Create a style guide: brand guidelines that get used

In short: a style guide records how your visual identity is applied. It is practical when it's short and contains exactly the information designers, printers, sign makers and your staff need: logo variants with rules, colour values for print, screen and vinyl, typefaces, image rules, examples and where the original files are. Short and used beats thick and forgotten.

What a corporate design achieves overall is covered in the article what does a corporate design achieve? This one is about the tool that holds it together day to day. As of October 2026.

What a style guide is for

A visual identity is rarely applied by a single person. An agency makes the website, a printer the business cards, a sign maker the vehicle graphics, the office manager writes the quote. Without a common basis, each place creates its own version: a different blue, a squashed logo, a substitute font. The style guide prevents that by recording the decisions once.

What goes in

Logo

• All variants: colour, single colour, light on dark, landscape and portrait, possibly a short mark.
• Clear space: the free space around the logo that nothing may intrude on.
• Minimum size: how small the logo may get, separately for print and screen.
• Don'ts with examples: no distorting, no recolouring, no busy backgrounds, no effects.

Colours

This is where most style guides fail, because only a single value is given. The same colour needs different specifications depending on where it appears:

• Print: CMYK values for four-colour printing, and if needed a spot colour from a colour guide for particularly precise colour fidelity.
• Screen: RGB and hex values for website, presentations and social media.
• Vinyl: the matching vinyl shade for cut lettering on vehicles, signs and shop windows, because films only come in certain shades.

Decide which value is the reference and compare the applications side by side: a blue meant to look the same on screen, paper and vinyl needs its own, matched value in each medium.

Typefaces

• Which typeface for headings, which for text, in which weights.
• Substitute fonts for office documents and emails if the corporate typeface isn't available there.
• Basic sizes and spacing for the most important applications.

More on choosing type in the article typography.

Images and graphics

• What kind of photos: real staff and projects or symbolic images, bright or moody, people or details.
• What to avoid, such as generic stock images.
• What icons and graphics look like when used. More in the article infographics.

Language

Half a page is enough: formal or informal address, what you call yourselves, which terms you use and which you don't. That makes website, quote and social media sound like the same business. Why that belongs together is explained in the article corporate identity vs. corporate design.

Examples

Finished applications say more than rules: business card, letterhead, a web page, a vehicle, a social media post. Anyone designing something new takes their cue from them.

Files and contact

Where are the original files, in which formats, and who is responsible when questions come up? Without this, the search for "the good version of the logo" starts all over again with every job.

Making sure the style guide gets used

• Keep it short: a few clear pages rather than a thick manual.
• As a PDF in a fixed place: together with the logo and template files, easy to pass on.
• Templates instead of rules: letterhead, quote template, presentation and social media templates with the rules already built in. What's prepared gets done right.
• Send it with every job: to printer, web agency, sign maker, stand builder.
• Maintain it: when something changes, update the style guide, with a date. Otherwise old versions circulate.

An example

The case is constructed, but typical. A landscaping business has a nice logo, but its green looks different everywhere: almost turquoise on the vehicle, olive on the business cards, garish on the website. Each provider read the colour value from a different file. The new style guide has six pages. One of them shows the green with matched values for print, screen and vinyl, next to photos of the three applications side by side. At the next job, it matches.

Our view

Because we don't only design visual identities but also print them and apply them as film to vehicles and signs, we know which information production really needs. A style guide without a vinyl shade or without a single-colour logo version reliably leads to questions there. So we create style guides that outside providers can work with straight away. More under corporate design & logo. The bigger picture is described in the article professional graphic design.

Checklist: your style guide

• Are all logo variants described with clear space and minimum size?
• Do your colours have values for print, screen and vinyl?
• Are typefaces and substitute fonts defined?
• Are there rules and examples for images?
• Are there finished templates for the most common applications?
• Does it say where the original files are and who is responsible?
• Is the style guide dated and up to date?

Frequently asked questions

What belongs in a style guide?

The essentials: the logo with all variants, clear space and minimum size; the colours with their values for print, screen and vinyl; the typefaces with sizes and uses; rules for images; and a few finished examples. Plus a note on where the files are and who helps with questions.

How extensive does a style guide need to be?

As short as possible. For a small business a few pages are often enough. What matters isn't the length but that the information is complete and unambiguous: a printer or sign maker must be able to work with it without asking back.

What is the difference between a style guide and a corporate design?

The corporate design is the visual identity itself: logo, colours, typefaces and how they work together. The style guide is the written instruction for it. It records how the visual identity is applied so that it looks the same everywhere, no matter who is working on it.