Brand Guidelines: What to Include, With the Brand Style Guide Structure We Hand Clients

Branding

Brand guidelines are the rulebook for how your brand looks, sounds and behaves wherever it appears. A complete set covers logo rules, color, typography, imagery, voice and messaging, templates and who approves changes. Good guidelines let a new designer, agency or AI tool produce on-brand work without asking you every time.

Below is the section structure we use when we hand a style guide to a client, what goes in each section and the mistakes that leave guidelines unused. [EVAN TO CONFIRM: this section order matches the current DMG client guide template.]

Brand guidelines, style guide or brand book?

The terms overlap, and most people use them interchangeably. When teams do separate them, the split usually looks like this.

Whatever you call it, judge it by one test. Someone outside your company should be able to use it to make something that looks and sounds like you.

What to include in brand guidelines

01	Brand foundation Positioning statement, audiences, brand promise and the few values that guide real decisions. Keep it to a page or two so people read it.
02	Logo system Primary logo, secondary and icon versions, clear space, minimum sizes, approved backgrounds and a page of misuse examples such as stretching, recoloring or added effects.
03	Color palette HEX, RGB, CMYK and Pantone values, primary and accent proportions, and tested text and background pairs. WCAG 2.2 asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for normal text, and W3C notes that brand guidelines do not exempt text from that rule, though logos are exempt (W3C).
04	Typography Typefaces and their licenses, weights, a type scale for headings and body text, web fallbacks and line spacing.
05	Voice and messaging A tone description with do and don’t examples, tagline, elevator pitch, boilerplate and words you use or avoid.
06	Photography direction Lighting, color treatment, composition and subjects, what real people and places should look like, and when stock is acceptable.
07	Video and motion Logo animation, lower thirds, captions, pacing, music direction and aspect ratios for each channel, plus rules for drone and aerial footage if you use it.
08	Templates and applications Social posts, slide decks, email signatures, business cards, signage and ads, with working files people can open and edit.
09	Digital and web Buttons, link styles, forms, an icon set and image ratios, so the website and the guide stay in sync.
10	AI content guidelines Approved prompts and reference images, words and visuals to avoid, rules for depicting people and a required human review before anything is published.
11	Governance Who owns the guide, where the current files live, how changes get approved and a version date on the cover.

Why AI prompt rules now belong in the guide

Teams already use AI tools to draft captions, product descriptions and concept images. Without rules, each person writes their own prompts and the output drifts. We use AI-powered Adobe workflows in our own post-production, so we write these rules the way we write photo direction, specific enough to test.

✓	A reusable prompt block that describes the brand voice in plain language
✓	Approved reference images and a short list of styles to avoid
✓	Claims, words and competitor references the AI should never produce
✓	Rules for generating people, including employees, clients and customers
✓	A named reviewer who signs off before anything goes live

This turns your guidelines into an input for the tools your team already uses, and it keeps AI output from drifting off-brand.

Two examples from our portfolio

The Exit Syndicate is reimagining how founders think about exits. Our brand development work included logo design, visual identity and messaging strategy, and we built a design system meant to speak to high-growth entrepreneurs, advisors and investors. With three audiences reading the same materials, the voice and messaging section carries extra weight. One guide has to keep the tone consistent for readers with different stakes.

Pat Kent is a Senior Vice President at SRS Real Estate in Newport Beach. We built his personal brand with a full identity overhaul, a custom website, commercial and drone photography, and an integrated SEO and social strategy, and we continue to manage his digital brand. When imagery does that much of the selling, the photography and video sections need the most detail so new shoots and campaigns keep matching the original visual narrative.

How brand guidelines get built

Guidelines come at the end of brand work, after the hard decisions are made. Our brand development process runs in three stages.

Writing guidelines before strategy is settled tends to force a rewrite, so we treat the guide as the record of decisions already made. [EVAN TO CONFIRM: the activities listed under each stage match how DMG runs discovery and strategy.]

Brand guidelines checklist

✓	Logo files in every format your team needs, including vector, transparent PNG and a favicon
✓	Clear space, minimum size and misuse examples
✓	Color codes for screen and print, with tested contrast pairs
✓	Licensed fonts with web fallbacks
✓	Voice traits with real examples, boilerplate and tagline
✓	Photo, video and drone direction with reference images
✓	Editable templates for the channels you use every week
✓	AI prompt rules and a review step
✓	An owner, a version date and one link to the current files

Common mistakes that leave guidelines unused

01	A PDF with no files Guidelines without the logo, font and template files force people to improvise.
02	Rules without examples A phrase like confident but warm means little until you show a sentence that fits and one that misses.
03	Nothing about imagery Photos and video appear on almost every page and post, so they need rules as clear as the logo’s.
04	No owner Without a named person responsible, the guide goes stale and people stop trusting it.

How long should brand guidelines be?

Long enough to cover every place your brand appears and short enough that people use it. A local service business with a website, social accounts and vehicle wraps needs less than a multi-location company with packaging and events. Pair the full guide with the one-page quick reference, and keep both in the same shared folder as the source files. [EVAN TO CONFIRM: typical page count of a DMG brand guide, if we want to state it.]

If you are budgeting for this, how much branding costs breaks down typical scopes, and signs your brand needs a refresh helps you decide between new guidelines and a new identity. Comparing partners? Start with how to choose a branding agency.

Frequently Asked Questions