How to Create Brand Guidelines: A Copy-Paste Template and 4 Examples (2026)

The Brand Guidelines Template (Copy and Paste)

Here is the gap in most templates: they are design files, so you have to open a specific app and rebuild your brand inside someone else's layout. This one is plain text. Paste it into Notion, Google Docs, or a markdown file, replace everything in brackets, and you are done.

Why plain text? Because it is easy to edit, easy to version, and easy to hand to an AI tool later. We will get to that in a moment.

# [Brand Name] Brand Guidelines
Version: 1.0 | Last updated: [date] | Owner: [name]

## 1. Mission and positioning
- Mission (one sentence): We help [audience] [achieve outcome] by [how].
- Audience: [who, in one sentence, with their main frustration]
- Positioning: For [audience], [brand] is the [category] that [key difference].
- Brand personality in 3 words: [word], [word], [word]

## 2. Voice and tone
- Trait 1: [e.g. Friendly] | We say: "[example line]" | We never say: "[counter example]"
- Trait 2: [e.g. Direct] | We say: "[example]" | We never say: "[counter example]"
- Trait 3: [e.g. Practical] | We say: "[example]" | We never say: "[counter example]"
- Point of view: [first person plural / first person singular]. We address the reader as "you".
- Grammar rules: [contractions yes/no], [emoji policy], [exclamation mark limit], [Oxford comma yes/no]
- Words we love: [list 5]. Words we avoid: [list 5].

## 3. Logo
- Versions: Main (full color), Light (for dark backgrounds), Dark (for light backgrounds), Icon (square avatars and favicons)
- Clear space: keep at least [X] (height of the logo icon) free on all sides
- Minimum size: [X] px on screen, [X] mm in print
- Never: stretch, rotate, recolor, add shadows, place on busy photos, crowd with other logos

## 4. Color
- Primary: [Name] [#HEX]. Use for: buttons, headlines, key shapes. Target share: 60%
- Secondary: [Name] [#HEX]. Use for: supporting shapes, backgrounds. Target share: 30%
- Accent: [Name] [#HEX]. Use for: calls to action, highlights only. Target share: 10%
- Neutrals: Text [#HEX], Background [#HEX], Border [#HEX]
- Rule: text must meet a 4.5:1 contrast ratio against its background
- Never: introduce a new color without updating this document

## 5. Typography
- Heading font: [Font], weights [700], sizes [H1 40 / H2 28 / H3 20]
- Body font: [Font], weight [400], size [16], line height [1.5]
- Rules: max 2 fonts per design, sentence case for headlines, no all caps beyond 3 words

## 6. Imagery
- Style: [photography / flat illustration / 3D / mixed]
- Subjects: [people at work, product close ups, abstract shapes]
- Lighting and mood: [bright and airy / moody / high contrast]
- Do: [3 rules]. Don't: [3 rules]
- Reference images: [link to your mood board]

## 7. Layout and spacing
- Margins: [X]% of the canvas on every side
- Alignment: [left aligned text, one focal point per design]
- Density: [max 1 headline, 1 supporting line, 1 visual]
- Corner radius: [X px]. Spacing unit: [8 px grid]

## 8. Social media do and don't
- Do: [post formats we use], [caption length], [hashtag count], [posting cadence]
- Don't: [formats we avoid], [topics we stay out of], [stock look imagery]
- Profile assets: avatar = Icon logo, banner = [description]

## 9. Approvals and contacts
- Who signs off: [name]. Where the master files live: [link]

That is roughly 400 words of template, and it covers everything a designer, writer, or AI tool needs to keep your brand consistent.

The One-Page Version for Solo Founders

If you are a team of one, the nine-section version can feel like overkill. Fair. This trimmed version takes about 20 minutes and captures the rules that cause 90% of inconsistency.

# [Brand] in one page
- We help [audience] do [outcome].
- Voice: [3 adjectives]. We sound like [a person or comparison]. Never [one thing].
- Logo: [file name]. Dark version on light backgrounds, light version on dark.
- Colors: [#HEX] 60%, [#HEX] 30%, [#HEX] 10% for buttons and highlights.
- Fonts: [Heading font] for headlines, [Body font] for everything else.
- Images: [one sentence describing the look]. Never [one thing].
- Layout: lots of whitespace, one message per post, text always readable.

Seven bullets. Print it, pin it above your desk, and paste it into every brief you send. You can always grow it into the full version once you hire your first freelancer.

How to Create Brand Guidelines in 6 Steps

A template is only useful if you know what to put in it. Here is the process, in order.

Step 1: Gather what you already use

Open your website, your last 10 social posts, your pitch deck, and any invoices or emails. Screenshot them and put them in one folder. You are not inventing a brand, you are documenting the one you already have and fixing the inconsistencies you spot.

Note what repeats: the colors that show up most, the fonts, the tone of your captions. Those repeats are your real brand, and your guidelines should reflect them.

Step 2: Define your mission, audience, and personality

Fill in section 1 of the template. Keep it short: one sentence each. If you cannot describe your audience in a single sentence, your posts will not speak to them either.

For the personality words, pick three that are true and useful. "Innovative" is neither. "Blunt, warm, practical" tells a writer what to do. A mood board is a fast way to test whether your three words show up visually.

Step 3: Lock in your logo rules

Decide which version of your logo goes where. Most brands need four: a main full-color version, a light version for dark backgrounds, a dark version for light backgrounds, and an icon for small square spaces like profile pictures.

Then write down the clear space and minimum size. Spotify's public guidelines are a good model here: they specify minimum sizes (70px for digital, 20mm for print) and list what never to do, like rotating or stretching the logo. You can read them on the Spotify for Developers design and branding page.

Step 4: Set your colors with hex codes and usage ratios

This is where most templates stay vague. "Our brand colors are purple and orange" is not a rule. "Purple #5A17DD at 60%, grey #8A91A0 at 30%, orange #F98F03 at 10% for calls to action only" is a rule that anyone can follow.

Stick to one primary, one secondary, one accent, and a few neutrals. The 60/30/10 split is a simple starting point: a dominant color, a supporting color, and a small punch of accent. Then add one accessibility rule. The W3C's WCAG contrast guidance asks for at least a 4.5:1 ratio for normal text and 3:1 for large text, so test your text and background pairs before you write them down.

Step 5: Choose typography, imagery, and layout rules

Pick two fonts: one for headings and one for body text. Write down sizes and weights for each level so nobody has to guess. If you are working with free fonts, Google Fonts has plenty of options that pair well.

For imagery, describe the look in words a stranger could act on: "bright natural light, real people, no stock handshake photos" beats "authentic." Then add layout rules: margins, how much text per design, and one focal point per visual. For a deeper dive on the visual side, see our guide to creating a social media aesthetic.

Step 6: Write your voice and channel rules, then share them

Voice is the section people skip, and it is the one that makes your captions and emails sound like one person wrote them. Give each trait a "we say" and a "we never say" example, as in the template.

Mailchimp's content style guide is the classic model. It is public, covers voice and tone alongside practical formats like email and social, and is released under a Creative Commons license so other teams can adapt it. Finish with the do and don't lists for each channel, save the whole thing somewhere everyone can open, and put a review date in your calendar.

Brand Guidelines Examples Worth Studying

You do not need a 100 page PDF. You do need to see what good rules look like. These four public examples each teach a different lesson.

The pattern across all four: they name exact values, they show what not to do, and they are easy to find. Mailchimp's brand assets page even states its primary color by name, Cavendish Yellow, with Peppercorn as the accent. The NASA Brand Center explains that its insignia is governed by federal regulation, which is why its rules are so precise.

Your guidelines will be shorter than theirs, and that is fine. Copy the specificity, not the page count.

How to Turn Your Guidelines Into Something an AI Can Follow

Here is the part most guides skip. If you use AI to make images, captions, or designs, your guidelines are only useful if the AI can read them. A PDF full of screenshots and vibes does not help. Plain, specific text does.

Three habits make your guidelines AI-ready:

1. Use exact values. Hex codes, font names, pixel sizes, and ratios. "Bold and modern" gives an AI room to guess. "#5A17DD headlines, 60% of the canvas" does not.
2. Write judgments, not adjectives. "Never use stock handshake photos" and "one message per post" are instructions. "Professional" is not.
3. Include do and don't pairs. Models follow contrasts well. A "we say" and "we never say" example teaches tone faster than a paragraph of description.

With those in place, paste the template into your prompts, or better, give it to a tool that stores it. If you want the full prompting workflow, our guide to creating branded AI images for social media walks through turning your brand into a reusable prompt recipe.

Where Krumzi fits

Krumzi gives you two ways to put your guidelines to work. Brand Mind, available on every plan, researches your brand from your website, customer reviews, and competitors, then states plain-language brand judgments that get applied to every design. It can also ingest your brand guideline PDFs, decks, and screenshots of past posts, so the document you just wrote does not sit in a folder.

On Pro and up, Brand Kit holds your logo variants (Main, Light, Dark, and Icon), your brand colors with shade scales, and your heading and body fonts, which come from Google Fonts. Those are applied automatically to your designs. Krumzi does not ship a library of guideline templates, which is why the copy-paste version above is here in the article instead.

How to Keep Your Brand Guidelines Alive

Guidelines rot fast if nobody owns them. Three habits keep yours useful.

• Review twice a year. Put it on the calendar. Update colors, fonts, or voice rules only when the change is deliberate.
• Version them. The header line in the template (Version, Last updated, Owner) is not decoration. It tells people they have the current rules.
• Audit against reality. Every quarter, line up your last 20 posts and check them against the document. If people keep breaking a rule, either the rule is wrong or it is unclear.

A quick scroll through your own feed will show you where the guidelines and the reality have drifted apart.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should a brand guidelines template include?

At minimum, a template should cover your mission and positioning, voice and tone, logo rules, colors with hex codes and usage ratios, typography, imagery style, layout and spacing, and do and don't rules for the channels you use. The copy-paste template above includes all eight, plus an approvals section so people know who signs off.

How long should brand guidelines be?

As long as they need to be and no longer. A solo founder can capture the essentials on one page. A growing team usually needs 5 to 15 pages. Large organizations publish much longer documents, but their extra length mostly comes from covering more channels and more people, not from better rules.

What is the difference between brand guidelines and a brand style guide?

The terms overlap heavily. A brand style guide usually focuses on visual and writing style: logo, colors, fonts, imagery, and voice. Brand guidelines often add strategy, such as mission, audience, and positioning. If you follow the template in this article, you get both in one document.

Can I create brand guidelines without a designer?

Yes. You need decisions, not design skills. Gather what you already use, pick a small set of colors and fonts, write specific rules, and add examples of what to avoid. A plain text document is enough to start, and you can turn it into a designed PDF later if you ever need to.

How do I make brand guidelines work with AI tools?

Write them in specific, plain language with exact values and do and don't examples, then store them where your AI tool can read them. Tools that accept guideline documents or keep a saved brand profile save you from re-pasting rules into every prompt.