Brand integrity is a fragile thing, so it needs to be treated as such. Brand guidelines are, in essence, your owner’s manual on how to “use” your brand. These guidelines will be referenced by everyone who touches your brand, internally or externally, and will often be partially reused in future brand identity revisions. Because of that, it’s important that you define enough of the guidelines to keep your brand consistent, but keep them short enough that contributors can actually digest all of the rules.
With that in mind, I’ve gathered some of the best publicly available brand guidelines that I could find in order to help you brainstorm what should go into your own brand guidelines. Whether you’re looking to produce a document that’s fairly straightforward, or complex and in-depth, you should find a resource in this list.
