How to Update Old Brand Guidelines

By Melon Cut ·

Old brand guidelines are worse than none, because people trust them. A PDF from four years ago may show a logo you retired, a color you changed and a font you no longer own. This guide shows how to update old brand guidelines in a sensible order, without throwing everything away.

Start with an audit, not a rewrite

Print or open the old guidelines and put a mark next to each item:

  • Still true: keep it.
  • Wrong: change it.
  • Missing: add it.
  • Never followed: decide whether to enforce it or remove it.

The fourth group is the most interesting. A rule nobody follows is either a bad rule or a rule that needs better communication.

Compare against reality

Collect what the brand actually looks like today: the website, the latest posts, packaging, signs, emails. Lay them out next to the guidelines. Where reality and the document disagree, ask which should win. Sometimes the team drifted. Sometimes the team improved things and the document never caught up.

Common things that go out of date

  1. Logo files and versions, especially a new icon or one-color version.
  2. Colors, after a website refresh.
  3. Fonts, after licenses change or a font is replaced.
  4. Voice, after the audience or products change.
  5. Social formats. Post and story sizes are not what they were a few years ago.
  6. Imagery, as photo style trends shift.
  7. Names, taglines, addresses and contact details.

Change in layers

Do the quick fixes first: file names, links, contact details. Then the visible rules: colors, fonts, logo usage. Last, the thinking: mission, voice, positioning. If you start at the end, the update stalls.

Do not delete the past

If you replace a logo or palette, keep a record of the old one and the date it was retired. People will find old files in drawers and old posts online, and they need to know whether those are still allowed. More on this in Keep Your Old Brand Identity After a Rebrand.

Tell people what changed

A new document nobody reads is no better than an old one. Write three lines: what changed, why, and what to do differently. Send them with the link.

A prompt for the audit

Here are the sections of our old brand guidelines: logo, colors, fonts, voice, imagery. For each one, list three questions I should ask to find out whether it is still correct.

Rewrite this old voice description in plainer English, keeping the meaning: "We maintain a professional yet approachable communication posture."

Check the output against what you really want to say.

In Melon Cut

In Melon Cut Guidelines you edit logos, colors, fonts, voice and usage sections in place, and a history of older identities is kept. After updating, new pictures made in Melon Cut Design with the brand named by @ follow the new version. Check an early result to confirm. For a first draft from scratch, see How to Create Brand Guidelines.

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