What Brand Guidelines Should Include
Most brand guidelines fail in one of two ways: they are too thin to settle an argument, or so long that nobody opens them. What brand guidelines should include is a middle path. Below is a checklist of nine sections, with a note on how much detail each one needs.
1. The foundations
Start with why the brand exists. A mission in one or two sentences, a short description of the audience, and the values you want to be known for. This section is short, but it is what you read when a new situation comes up that no rule covers.
2. Logos
Show every version you allow: primary, stacked, icon, light, dark. Name each file clearly. Say which one goes where, for example "icon only for profile pictures".
3. Logo usage
Minimum size, clear space, and a short "do not" list. This is the section designers and printers read first.
4. Colors
List each color with its code and its job. Mark the main color, the supporting ones and the neutrals. If a color should never carry text because contrast is poor, say so.
5. Fonts
Name the headline font and the body font, the weights, and a sample size for each level. Add a fallback font for places where the real one cannot load, such as email.
6. Voice and tone
Voice is who you are; tone is how it shifts. A support reply and a launch announcement should sound like the same person in different moods. Give three voice traits and two or three before and after examples.
7. Imagery
Describe the pictures that fit. Natural light or studio? People or objects? Bright or muted? A few words here save hours of back and forth. It matters most when AI makes the pictures, because the description becomes part of the prompt.
8. Assets, models and templates
Keep approved files together: logos, icons, product shots. If you have a mascot, a signature product or a post layout you reuse, store it as something people can pick up and use rather than rebuild.
9. History
Brands change. A record of older logos and colors tells people which versions are retired and why. See Keep Your Old Brand Identity After a Rebrand.
What to leave out
Skip long theory about color psychology, pages of examples that repeat each other, and rules you do not follow yourself. Every rule should be one you would enforce.
Example prompts for filling the gaps
Suggest five adjectives to describe the imagery of a family-run garden center, and a one-line rule for each.
Turn these three bullets about our mission into a mission statement of two sentences in plain English.
Read the results critically and cut anything that does not sound like you.
Doing it in Melon Cut
Melon Cut Guidelines has places for each of these: logos, colors, fonts, voice and tone, mission and other foundations, usage sections, a library of assets, models and templates, and a history of older identities. Once written, name the brand with @ in Melon Cut Design and your pictures follow it. Start with How to Create Brand Guidelines if you have nothing yet.