What is actually inside a brand guidelines book
Most people buy brand guidelines without ever having seen a page of one. So here are the pages. This is the design system we build, component by component, with the real diagrams.
Why a guideline document exists at all
Not for you. For everyone else.
Your brand does not fail because you forget what your colors are. It fails because a printer, a sign shop, an embroiderer, a new hire, a franchisee, a slide deck and a Facebook page all make small independent decisions, and in eighteen months none of them match. A guidelines book is the document that makes those decisions for them in advance.
Every component below exists because there is a specific, repeatable way a brand comes apart without it.
01. The logo system
A logo is not one file. It is a set of lockups, each one built for a different shape of space.
The failure this prevents: you order dark polos and discover there is no reversed version, so someone at the embroidery shop improvises one. Or your profile picture gets cropped into a circle and the wordmark disappears, so someone crops the file by hand and now there are two versions of your logo in the world.
02. Logo mark schematics
The construction drawings. This is the difference between a picture of a logo and a specification for one.
How the mark is built
Every angle, weight and curve derives from one grid unit. Anyone with the drawing can rebuild the mark exactly, at any size, in ten years, without the original file.
The zone nothing enters
Expressed in units of the mark itself, so it scales automatically. This is the rule that stops your logo being crowded against a phone number on every flyer.
The legibility floor
The smallest size at which the mark still reads, tested on the substrates we actually print, not just on a screen at 200 percent zoom.
03. Color theory and the color usage guide
One color, four numbers. This is the single most valuable page in the book.
Spot printing
A physical ink reference. What a screen printer, a foil stamper or a sign shop asks for when the color has to be exact.
Process printing
Four color process on paper. Your cards, brochures and posters live here, and the values are not the same as your screen values.
Screen
Website, app, email, slide decks and social. HEX is what a developer will ask for, and giving them a photo of your logo is not an answer.
Why this palette
What each color is doing, how the combinations behave, and which pairings are load bearing. The reasoning, so future decisions stay inside the system.
Where each color is allowed
Primary, secondary and accent. Which color is reserved for action, which never carries body text, which never sits on white.
Legal and legible
We check contrast ratios against WCAG 2.2 AA, because an inaccessible brand palette is a problem you inherit on every page you ever build.
04. Typography
A display face, a text face, a fixed scale, and the rules that keep them.
Display and text
One face for headlines, chosen to hold up at sign distance. One for body, chosen to stay readable at caption size. They have to work together and they have to work alone.
Fixed sizes, fixed line heights
A defined set of sizes, so a team producing material without a designer cannot invent a fourteenth heading size.
Cleared for commercial use
We verify the licence covers commercial use and web embedding before we specify a face. A brand built on a font you are not licensed to use is a problem waiting for an invoice.
05. Iconography
A system, not a pile of icons.
Icons pulled one at a time from four different free libraries are the fastest way to make a professional company look assembled from parts. A brand icon set is drawn on one grid, with one stroke weight, one corner radius and one style of terminal, so the whole set reads as one voice at 16 pixels and at 96.
06. The file usage guide
The least glamorous page in the book, and the one your vendors will actually use.
| Send this file | To this vendor | For this job |
|---|---|---|
| EPS or PDF vector | Commercial printer, sign shop, vinyl cutter, screen printer | Anything printed, cut or at size |
| One color vector | Embroiderer, laser engraver, foil, etching, stamps | Anything that cannot reproduce gradients |
| SVG | Web developer, app developer | Anything on a screen that must stay sharp and light |
| Transparent PNG | Social profiles, slide decks, documents, email signatures | Anything that sits on a colored background |
| Reversed version | Anyone producing on a dark field | Dark shirts, night signage, dark mode, vehicle panels |
| Pantone reference | Any vendor who asks what colour it is | Colour matching across two or more suppliers |
07. How it is delivered
On paper and on a drive, because a shared folder link does not survive a staff change.
What happens without a system
Every component above maps to a specific failure. These are the four we see most often on artwork bought elsewhere.
Buy the system, or buy the mark
A full identity system with all seven components is $2,500 and takes 2 to 3 weeks. If a mark on its own is honestly what you need today, that is $495 and takes 5 to 7 business days. We will tell you which one you are.
Designed in Dallas · Latino-Owned Business · We speak English and Espanol