Brand Style Guide: What to Include, a Free Template and Real Examples

A brand style guide, also called brand guidelines, is the reference document that tells anyone creating something for your business exactly how to use your logo, colors, fonts, images and words. It turns your brand identity into rules: which logo version goes where, the exact HEX, RGB, CMYK and Pantone codes, which fonts and under which license, how photos should look and how you sound. Done right, a designer, a printer or a new hire can produce on-brand work without asking you a single question.

For a small business, the goal is not a 100-page manual. It is a short document that answers the questions you get every week: “Do you have the logo in white?”, “What is your exact blue?”, “Which font is that?”.

What is a brand style guide?

A brand style guide is the rulebook for your brand identity. It is written for the people who make your materials: you and your team, graphic designers, web developers, printers and sign makers, the freelancer who runs your social media, the agency that writes your ads.

Without one, the drift is predictable: the logo gets stretched on the van, three slightly different blues appear on the website, the quote and the business card, and every new flyer starts from zero. The guide fixes that by deciding once, in writing. It usually lives as a PDF or a web page, plus a shared folder with the approved files.

Brand style guide vs brand identity vs brand book

The terms overlap, which is why so many quotes are confusing. Here is how they are generally used:

In practice, “brand style guide” and “brand guidelines” are interchangeable. Most small businesses combine the brand book and the style guide into one document: a page of strategy up front, then the rules.

Logo rules: versions, clear space, minimum size, misuse

The logo section is the one people open most. It should cover:

• Approved versions: primary, horizontal or stacked, icon only (for favicons and social avatars), one-color, and reversed white for dark backgrounds.
• File formats: vector files (SVG, EPS or PDF) for print, signs and vehicles, PNG for websites and office documents.
• Clear space: the empty margin around the logo, defined with a unit taken from the logo itself so it scales.
• Minimum size: one value for screens in pixels and one for print.
• Backgrounds: which version goes on white, on dark, on your brand color and on photos.
• Misuse: six to eight visual examples of what not to do: stretching, recoloring, rotating, adding shadows, placing the logo on a busy photo.

Spotify's public design guidelines show how precise this can be. The Spotify logo should never be smaller than 70 pixels in digital or 20 mm in print, the icon never smaller than 21 pixels or 6 mm, the exclusion zone equals half the height of the icon, and the green logo is only used on black or white backgrounds.

Color codes: HEX, RGB, CMYK and Pantone

Every brand color needs several codes because screens and printers produce color differently:

Two rules save money. Choose CMYK and Pantone values from printed proofs and a physical swatch book rather than a free online converter, because screens can show colors that ink cannot reproduce. And define proportions: one primary color, one or two secondary colors, neutrals, and an accent used sparingly.

Check contrast as well. The W3C accessibility standard (WCAG 2.2) requires a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text and 3:1 for large text. List in your guide which color pairs pass for text, so nobody sets light gray copy on your pale brand color.

Typography and font licenses

Your typography section should define:

• A heading font and a body font, rarely more than two families.
• A hierarchy: weights and sizes for titles, subtitles, body text and captions, plus line spacing.
• Fallback fonts for places where your fonts are not available, such as email signatures and shared office documents (Arial or Georgia, for example).
• Where to get the files and who holds the license.

Fonts are software, and each comes with a license. Google states that all Google Fonts are open source, can be used commercially and can be used in any logo; the most common license is the SIL Open Font License. Adobe Fonts are licensed for personal and commercial use as part of a Creative Cloud subscription, but Adobe notes that editable documents referencing those fonts, such as InDesign or Word files, show a missing fonts warning if the subscription is canceled, while PDFs and images keep displaying correctly. Fonts bought from commercial foundries are often licensed per computer, per website or per app. Write down which license covers which use, and if a designer works on their own subscription, ask which fonts you need to license yourself.

Imagery: photos, illustrations and icons

• Photo style: natural light or studio, people or products, color treatment, framing. Show three good examples and three to avoid.
• Real over stock: for a local service business, the strongest rule is usually “real photos of our team, our vehicles and our finished work”.
• Illustrations: line or flat, color use, when to use them instead of photos.
• Icons: one library, one style (outline or filled), one stroke weight.
• Graphic elements: patterns, shapes or textures derived from the logo, with rules for how they are cropped.

Voice and tone

Voice is your personality in words and stays the same everywhere. Tone adapts to the situation: a quote, a late-delivery apology and a social post do not sound alike, even from the same brand. Mailchimp's public Content Style Guide is the classic reference: it has a dedicated voice and tone section, grammar and mechanics rules and a word list, and it is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 license.

For a small business, this section can be one page:

• Three or four traits written as pairs: “direct, not blunt”, “expert, not full of jargon”, “warm, not casual”.
• Words you use and words you avoid, including how you name your services.
• Formats: how you write prices, dates, phone numbers and your company name.
• Ready-to-use lines: tagline, a 50-word company description, a short bio for the founder.

Templates and real-world applications

Rules only stick when people have ready-made files. Add templates or mockups for what you produce most:

• Email signature (see our guide on how to add a signature in Outlook, Gmail and Apple Mail, or build one with the free email signature generator).
• Business cards, letterhead, quotes and invoices.
• Proposal or slide deck.
• Social media posts, stories and profile images.
• Website elements: buttons, headings, forms.
• Vehicle wraps, signage, uniforms and merchandise.

Brand style guide template you can copy

Paste this outline into a document or a slide deck and fill in each section. Brackets are placeholders.

1. Brand foundation: one-sentence positioning, who we serve, our promise, three personality traits.
2. Logo: primary, stacked, icon, one-color and reversed versions; clear space [x = height of the icon]; minimum size [px on screen, inches in print]; approved backgrounds; misuse examples; link to the files.
3. Color palette: for each color, a name, HEX, RGB, CMYK, Pantone and share of use, for example “Harbor Navy, #1F3A5F, RGB 31 58 95, CMYK [from your printer], Pantone [matched on a swatch book]”; approved text and background pairs.
4. Typography: heading font, body font, weights and sizes, fallback fonts for email and office documents, license and license holder.
5. Imagery: photo style with do and don't examples, illustration style, icon library, standard crops.
6. Voice and tone: traits (this, not that), words we use and avoid, formats for prices, dates and phone numbers, company description.
7. Applications: email signature, business card, quote and invoice, proposal, social media, website, vehicle and signage.
8. Files and contacts: link to the shared folder, who approves new materials, last updated [date].

Real brand guidelines worth studying

Many large brands publish their guidelines. Borrow the structure, not the look. All links below were checked in October 2026.

How to create a brand style guide in 7 steps

1. Collect what you already use. Logo files, every color in circulation, fonts, your best-performing flyers, posts and web pages. Note the inconsistencies: they tell you which rules matter most.
2. Write the foundation in one page. Who you serve, what you promise, how you are different, and three personality traits.
3. Lock the logo system. Pick the approved versions, export every format, then define clear space, minimum sizes and misuse examples.
4. Fix the color palette. Set HEX and RGB, get CMYK and Pantone matches validated on paper, check text contrast against the 4.5:1 rule.
5. Choose and license the fonts. Confirm who holds each license and define fallbacks for email and office documents.
6. Define imagery and voice with examples. Rules without a “do” and a “don't” next to them get ignored.
7. Build templates and publish. Create the files people need, put the guide and the assets in one shared place, name an owner and review the guide once a year.

How much does a brand style guide cost?

The price depends mostly on what already exists. Documenting an existing logo and palette is a small job; designing the identity and the guide together is a bigger project; agency work that adds research and strategy costs much more. We break down real price ranges for logos, full identities and standalone guidelines, along with the source-file and copyright traps to settle before you pay, in how much a logo and brand identity cost.

A style guide also pays off well beyond design: your website, your ads and your quotes all get faster to produce once the rules are written. If you would rather have it built for you, our branding team starts with a free 30-minute call and sends a fixed quote within 72 hours.