Brand guidelines

Brand guidelines, also called a brand book or brand style guide, are the written rules and ready to use files that let anyone apply your brand correctly: staff making a slide deck, a printer producing a sign, a freelancer designing a social post or a new marketing coordinator writing an email. Useful brand guidelines cover logo use, colour values for print and screen, typography, photography style, templates, voice and tone, accessibility and French and English usage, and they make it easy for suppliers to get the right files. They are for owners and marketing coordinators who are tired of seeing five versions of the same logo. Canada Create is a Toronto agency serving businesses across Canada.

Contents

• What brand guidelines are for
• Logo use rules
• Colour palette for print and screen
• Typography and font licences
• Photography, illustration and icons
• Templates over rules
• Voice and tone with examples
• Accessibility and bilingual use
• Supplier handoff, formats and updates
• Trademarks, licences and claims
• How we build brand guidelines
• What brand guidelines cost
• How to choose who writes your guide
• Your next step

What brand guidelines are for

A brand drifts the moment more than one person touches it. The office manager stretches the logo to fit a flyer, a sign shop matches the colour by eye, a new hire picks a different font for proposals, and within a year the business looks like several different companies. Brand guidelines stop that drift by answering the questions people would otherwise guess at.

Who reads them

• Staff who make documents, presentations and social posts.
• Outside designers, printers, sign makers, vehicle wrap shops and web developers.
• Franchisees, partners and resellers who show your logo.
• New marketing hires who need to learn the brand quickly.
• Event organizers and sponsors who ask for your logo with a short deadline.

Usable beats beautiful

Many brand books are designed to impress at the launch meeting and then never opened again. A usable guide is short where it can be, shows examples rather than lecturing, and links straight to the files people need. If a coordinator cannot find the right logo file in under a minute, the guide has failed, however handsome it is. The guide sits on top of your brand identity; it documents a brand that exists, rather than inventing one.

Logo use rules

The logo section is the one people open most, so it needs to be clear and complete.

Versions

Most brands need a primary logo, a horizontal and a stacked version, a symbol on its own for small spaces such as social avatars and favicons, and one colour versions in dark and reversed white. Each version should state where it is used, so a sign shop knows which one goes on a narrow fascia and which goes on a square window decal.

Clear space and minimum size

Clear space is the empty area around the logo that nothing else may enter, usually measured using a part of the logo itself so it scales. Minimum size is the smallest the logo can appear in print and on screen before details blur. Both prevent the cramped, unreadable logo on the bottom of a sponsor banner.

Misuse examples

A page of what not to do is often the most useful page in the guide: no stretching, no recolouring, no drop shadows, no outlines, no placing on busy photos, no rearranging the symbol and wordmark. Showing the mistakes visually works better than describing them. If the logo itself needs work before the rules are written, our logo design service handles that first.

Colour palette for print and screen

Colour is where brands drift fastest, because every medium reproduces it differently.

Values for every medium

Each brand colour is listed with its values for screens (hex and RGB), for process printing (CMYK), and where it matters for a specific ink match (a spot colour reference). Sign and vehicle colours may also need a vinyl or paint match chosen with the supplier. Without these values, every supplier makes their own guess.

Primary, secondary and neutral colours

The guide shows which colours lead and how much each is used, often as a simple visual of proportion: mostly white or a neutral, the primary colour for emphasis, an accent used sparingly. It also defines tints for backgrounds and the colours for text, links and buttons on the website.

Approved combinations

Not every pairing in a palette works. The guide shows which text colours may sit on which backgrounds, which ties directly to contrast and accessibility, covered below.

Typography and font licences

The type system

The guide names the typefaces and the weights in use, then sets a hierarchy: headings, subheadings, body text, captions, buttons. Each level gets a size range for print and screen and a line spacing, so a proposal and a web page feel like the same brand.

Fallback fonts

Brand fonts are not always installed on every computer. The guide names a fallback for everyday documents, presentations and email so staff are not left choosing whatever is in the menu. It also notes which web fonts the website loads.

Licences

Fonts are software with licences. A desktop licence may not cover the website, an app or a vehicle wrap, and some licences limit how many computers may install the font. The guide records which licences the business holds, in whose name, and where each font may be used, so a supplier never installs an unlicensed copy.

Photography, illustration and icons

Photography style

The photography section describes and shows the look: natural light or studio, people at work or products alone, candid or posed, colour treatment, what to avoid. A few strong examples and a few rejected ones teach faster than paragraphs. If your library is thin, our photography team can shoot images that match the guide, which then becomes the brief for every later shoot.

Image library and file naming

An approved image library saves staff from pulling random photos off the website or a phone. The guide explains where the library lives, how folders are organized (by location, service or season, for example), how files are named so the right one can be found by search, and which images are retired. It also notes who took each photo and whether people shown have agreed to its use, which matters when a staff member leaves.

Illustration

If the brand uses illustration, the guide sets the style: line weight, colour use, level of detail, and where illustration replaces photography. It also states who may create new illustrations so the style stays consistent.

Icons

An icon set needs a consistent stroke, corner style and size grid. The guide includes the set as files and explains how to request a new icon rather than downloading a mismatched one.

Templates over rules

The fastest way to keep a brand consistent is to give people a finished starting point. Rules tell people what to do; templates do most of it for them.

Templates worth including

• Letterhead, memo and report documents in everyday word processing formats.
• Proposal and quote templates with cover, section and pricing page styles.
• Presentation templates with title, section, content, chart and closing slides.
• Social post templates for announcements, quotes, events and hiring.
• Email signatures with the correct logo size, colours and contact layout.
• Business cards, name badges and simple flyers.

Locking the right things

Good templates fix the logo, colours and type while leaving text and images editable. Staff then change what they should and cannot easily change what they should not. Our graphic design team builds the templates alongside the guide, and our social media management team works from the same social templates when it posts for you.

Voice and tone with examples

A visual guide without a voice section leaves half the brand unguided. Customers meet your words in emails, quotes, voicemails and website pages far more often than they meet your logo.

Voice traits

Voice is described as a few traits with limits, such as “plain, not simplistic” or “confident, not boastful”. Each trait comes with a short explanation of what it means for the business.

Tone by situation

Tone shifts with the moment while the voice stays the same. The guide shows the difference between a welcome email, a reply to a complaint, a past due invoice reminder, a job posting and a social post. Before and after rewrites of real sentences are the most useful examples.

Writing for different channels

The same voice reads differently on a vehicle, in a text message and in a long proposal. The guide gives short rules per channel: how long a social caption runs, how formal a quote cover letter should be, how the business answers the phone, and what an out of office reply says. These small, concrete rules settle most of the daily questions staff ask a marketing coordinator.

Word list

A short list of preferred and avoided words settles everyday questions: the exact business name, how to write service names, whether to say clients or customers, spelling conventions (Canadian spelling, for example), and words that should never appear. Our content writing service can draft the voice section and rewrite core pages to match it.

Accessibility and bilingual use

Contrast and readability

The guide marks which colour pairs pass contrast for normal text, which pass only for large text, and which must never be used for text at all. It sets minimum type sizes for print and screen, asks for real text rather than text inside images, and reminds people not to carry meaning by colour alone. Building these into the guide prevents inaccessible materials from being made in the first place.

French and English

Businesses serving French and English customers need rules for both. The guide covers whether the logo has a French version or stays the same, how bilingual signs and documents are laid out (side by side, top and bottom, or separate pieces), which language comes first in which context, and French typography conventions such as spacing before certain punctuation and the use of guillemets. French text usually runs longer, so templates leave room for it.

Supplier handoff, formats and updates

Most brand mistakes happen at the supplier, not in the office. The guide should make a supplier’s job simple.

Applied examples

Show the brand on real items: the main sign, a window decal, a vehicle side and rear, a uniform, a trade show banner, packaging. Applied examples answer questions about scale and placement that rules cannot. Our signs and large format team can produce mockups for these pages and the final items.

The supplier pack

A supplier pack bundles what an outside party needs: logo files in vector and image formats, colour values, font names with licence notes, key templates and a one page quick reference. It should be one link or one folder, not a scatter of email attachments.

Co-branding and partner use

Partners, sponsors and event organizers will ask for your logo. The guide sets how it appears next to another brand: equal size or secondary, which version on dark backgrounds, the clear space between the two marks, and what partners may not do, such as recolouring your logo to match theirs.

Who approves exceptions

No guide covers everything. The guide names who approves an exception, such as a co-branded sponsor banner or an unusual sign shape, and how to ask. Without a named approver, exceptions slowly become the rule.

PDF and online page

A PDF guide is easy to send to a printer and keep on file. An online brand page, often a private page on your website, is easier to keep current and can host the download links directly. Many businesses use both: a PDF for suppliers and an online page for staff. Our website design team can build the online version.

Keeping it current

Guides go stale when a new service, location or campaign arrives and nobody updates them. Set a person responsible, date each version, keep a short change log at the front and review the guide whenever the brand changes in a visible way. Outdated files should be removed from shared drives so nobody uses them by accident.

Ownership

The guide, the source files and the asset library belong to your business and should live in a shared drive or account in your business name, not in a designer’s personal storage.

Trademarks, licences and claims

The guide is also where the business records how its marks and assets may be used. This is a marketing observation, not legal advice.

Trademarks

The guide should reflect the legal status of your marks. Whether a logo clashes with someone else’s registration, and whether to file your own with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, are questions for a trademark agent or lawyer. Once they answer, the guide can show the registered symbol where your counsel asks for it.

Licences

Fonts, stock images and illustrations carry licences that set where they may be used. The guide lists each licence and its limits so staff and suppliers stay within them.

Claims and accessibility

Writers following the voice section should also know the claims rule: under the Competition Act, statements like made in Canada or eco friendly have to be accurate and provable. The contrast pairs set earlier in the guide support AODA expectations in Ontario, with WCAG as the reference for type and colour.

How we build brand guidelines

1. Free review. We look at your current logo files, materials and any existing guide, and ask where the brand drifts most.
2. Written proposal. The sections, templates, formats and languages, with fees quoted in writing.
3. Audit and gathering. Collecting every logo file, colour, font and template in use, and settling which are correct.
4. Drafting and templates. The guide written and designed, templates built, and drafts reviewed with the people who will use them.
5. Handover. The PDF, the online page if included, the supplier pack and a short walkthrough for staff.

Every file is handed over in your business’s name, ready for the next person who needs it.

What brand guidelines cost

Brand guidelines fees are quoted in writing after a free review. The size of the guide matters less than what has to be decided and built.

What changes the fee

• Whether the logo, palette and type are settled or need decisions first.
• How many templates are built, and in which formats.
• Whether a voice and tone section is written.
• Whether the guide is in English only or in French and English.
• How many applied examples, such as signs and vehicles, are mocked up.
• Whether an online brand page is built as well as the PDF.
• How many sub brands or locations need their own rules.

Starting small

A short starter guide with logo rules, colours, type and a supplier pack can come first, with templates and voice added later. Font licences and stock images are bought in your name and shown separately.

How to choose who writes your guide

• Will the guide be short enough for staff to use, and can I see a sample page?
• Do you build templates, or only write rules?
• How will you handle colour values for signs, vehicles and print?
• Will you include voice and tone, and French and English usage?
• Who owns the accounts? The answer should be you. The asset library, font licences and source files should be in your business name.
• How do we keep the guide up to date after handover?

A good sign is a designer who asks how your staff actually make documents today, because that is where the guide will be tested.

Your next step

Gather the logo files and materials you have, including the ones you suspect are wrong, and send them with a note on where the brand looks inconsistent. We will review them for free and send a written proposal for a guide your team will open. Call (416) 273-9030, Monday to Friday, 9 am to 6 pm, and Saturday, 10 am to 2 pm. After hours, our 24/7 AI agent answers the toll-free line, +1 (800) 808-9235, and we’ll follow up the next business morning. We reply within one business day. Canada Create is at 126 Willowdale Avenue, Suite 3, Toronto, and you can also share your brand files with us ahead of the review.