Back in 2016, we described brand guidelines as your organisation's "bible on brand" - the place anyone could turn to understand how your brand should look, feel and sound.
Ten years later, we'd probably choose a slightly less dramatic description.
But we'd argue they're more important than ever.
That's because the number of people creating things on behalf of your brand has exploded. Marketing teams, sales teams, HR, external agencies, freelancers, social media managers and increasingly AI tools can all have a hand in producing content and communications.
Add websites, social channels, video, presentations, proposals, events, email campaigns, digital advertising and a never-ending collection of Canva templates into the mix, and keeping a brand coherent can become surprisingly difficult.
Good brand guidelines solve that problem.
Not by policing every font size or slapping wrists when someone moves the logo five millimetres to the left, but by giving people enough clarity to represent your organisation confidently and consistently – even when the marketing team isn't standing over their shoulder.
And importantly, modern brand guidelines should cover much more than how your brand looks.
So, what should brand guidelines actually include?
At their simplest, brand guidelines document the rules and principles that help people understand how your brand should be expressed.
The visual elements are the obvious ones: logo usage, colour palette, typography, imagery, iconography, graphic devices and examples of how those elements work together.
But that's only part of the story.
A useful set of guidelines should also help people understand what the brand stands for, who it's speaking to and how it communicates. Depending on the organisation, that might include positioning, key messages, tone of voice, language principles, values and practical examples of what sounds "on brand" – and what doesn't.
For larger or more complex organisations, guidelines may also need to explain brand architecture, sub-brands, accessibility considerations, photography and video, data visualisation, templates and how the identity flexes across different channels.
The goal isn't to document absolutely everything anyone could ever possibly do.
It's to give people enough guidance to make good brand decisions without having to ask marketing every five minutes.
And that brings us to why they're worth having.
1. They save time – and quite possibly your marketing team's sanity
This was our first reason back in 2016, and we're keeping it firmly on the list.
Without clear guidelines, surprisingly small decisions can consume an enormous amount of time.
Which logo do I use? Is this the right blue? Can this heading be in that font? What PowerPoint template should I start with? Are we allowed to use this type of image? Should this sound formal or conversational? Can the logo go over a photograph?
Multiply those questions across an organisation and suddenly your marketing team has become the brand help desk.
Clear guidelines allow people to answer many of those questions themselves. They also make life considerably easier when you're working with an external agency, designer, photographer, videographer or other supplier because everyone starts with the same understanding of the brand.
Less explaining. Fewer rounds of corrections. Less money spent paying someone to redo something that should have been right the first time.
That's not glamorous, but it's extremely useful.
2. They protect the way people perceive your organisation
Every communication contributes something to the way people perceive your brand.
One slightly rogue PowerPoint presentation probably isn't going to bring the whole thing crashing down. But when your website feels premium, your sales proposal looks homemade, your LinkedIn content sounds like a different organisation and your recruitment materials have invented their own visual identity, the overall impression starts to become muddled.
Brand guidelines help connect those experiences.
That's particularly important because a brand isn't simply what your marketing team says it is. It's the impression people build through repeated interactions with your organisation.
Your guidelines should therefore help teams understand the reason behind the brand, not just the rules.
If people know the audience you're trying to reach, the qualities you want to be known for and the promise you're making to customers, they're much better equipped to make sensible decisions when they encounter something the guidelines don't explicitly cover.
And they will encounter something the guidelines don't cover.
Which is why principles are every bit as important as rules.
3. They create consistency without turning your brand into a robot
Consistency still matters. Absolutely.
But consistency doesn't mean every piece of communication needs to look identical or use exactly the same tone.
A LinkedIn post, annual report, tender presentation and Instagram Reel have very different jobs to do. Your brand should be recognisable across all of them without forcing every channel into the same mould.
That's where good guidelines distinguish between the things that shouldn't move and the things that can flex.
Your core positioning, visual identity and fundamental personality should remain recognisable. But the way those things are expressed can adapt to the audience, channel and context.
Tone of voice is a good example. The organisation shouldn't suddenly develop a completely different personality on social media, but the level of formality, sentence structure and vocabulary might reasonably shift between a board report and an Instagram caption.
Strong guidelines don't eliminate creativity.
They create a framework in which people can be creative without accidentally turning your brand into something else.
4. They make it easier for more people to create on-brand content
This is one area where the world has changed considerably since we first wrote this article.
You no longer need professional design software – or even professional design skills – to create something that looks reasonably polished.
Tools such as Canva have made content creation far more accessible, which can be enormously useful for organisations that need teams to produce everyday materials quickly.
AI has pushed that democratisation even further. Teams can now draft social copy, presentations, emails, images and other content in minutes.
But easier creation doesn't automatically mean better branding.
In fact, the easier it becomes for everyone to create content, the more important it becomes to give them clear boundaries.
Good guidelines can show teams which templates to use, how much freedom they have, what imagery is appropriate, how the organisation should sound and which elements should never be altered.
They can also provide the foundations for using AI more responsibly. If your organisation uses generative AI to help draft marketing content, for example, documented tone-of-voice principles, messaging and language preferences give people something concrete against which to review the output.
AI can generate copy very quickly.
Your brand guidelines still need to tell you whether it sounds like you.
5. They protect the integrity of the brand as the organisation grows
The more people involved in a brand, the easier it is for that brand to drift.
This can become particularly noticeable when organisations grow quickly, open new locations, introduce new services, work with multiple suppliers or have different teams producing their own communications.
One small variation becomes another. Someone creates a new template because they can't find the original. A slightly different colour creeps in. A new icon style appears. Someone invents a tagline. Before long, you've accumulated six versions of something that was once quite simple.
Brand guidelines give everyone a common reference point.
We saw this first-hand when MIH worked with the Infrastructure Sustainability Council on its refreshed brand and new brand hierarchy. After developing the strategy and visual identity, we created comprehensive guidelines covering the brand's application so the internal team could carry it forward consistently across everything from presentations to certificates and digital communications.
See how MIH developed the Infrastructure Sustainability Council's brand and guidelines
That's where guidelines really earn their keep. They don't just document the brand at the moment it's created; they help protect the thinking and investment behind it long after the original project has finished.
How much is too much?
Here's where we'll happily argue against ourselves.
Brand guidelines can absolutely become too complicated.
A beautifully designed 150-page document isn't much use if nobody can find the answer they need – or if staff quietly ignore it because following the rules requires a marketing degree.
The right level of detail depends on the organisation.
A small business with one marketing person may need a concise, practical guide covering its essential visual and verbal identity. A national organisation with multiple business units, agencies and content creators may need something far more comprehensive, supported by templates, asset libraries and clear governance.
Either way, the test should be usability.
Can people find what they need? Do the examples reflect the work they actually produce? Are the rules clear enough to follow? Does the document explain where the brand can flex? And, perhaps most importantly, are people actually using it?
If the answer to the last question is no, you've probably got some work to do.
Brand guidelines aren't there to constrain your brand. They're there to help people use it.
That's the distinction that matters.
The best brand guidelines don't create a long list of things people aren't allowed to do. They give teams the confidence and tools to create communications that feel unmistakably connected to the same organisation.
They save time. They protect your reputation. They make external partnerships easier. They support consistency as the business grows. And they help preserve the strategy and thinking behind the brand, rather than letting it slowly disappear through a thousand tiny compromises.
At MIH, we develop brand guidelines as part of our wider brand strategy and design work, bringing together the strategic, verbal and visual elements people need to put a brand into practice – not just admire it in a presentation.
Because a great brand isn't much use if nobody knows how to use it.
Are your brand guidelines actually doing their job?
Maybe you don't have any. Maybe yours were created years ago and no longer reflect the business. Or perhaps you've got a beautiful brand guidelines document sitting somewhere on the server that nobody has opened since launch day.
If you're not sure whether your guidelines are giving your team what they actually need – or whether it's time to update them – that's a good question to put to us.
Book a free 30-minute consultation with a senior MIH strategist and bring us your brand question. We can talk through what's working, where things are starting to unravel and whether your guidelines need a simple tidy-up or a more substantial rethink.
You'll get an experienced outside perspective and some practical next steps, with no obligation and absolutely no sales ambush.
Pick our brains – book your free 30-minute consultation
