Based on the brand documents our design team has built and audited for Australian businesses, a complete brand guideline should cover three areas.
Visual identity comes first. This includes primary and secondary logos, minimum sizing, clear space rules, incorrect usage examples, your corporate typeface and font family, primary and secondary colour palettes with HEX, RGB and CMYK values, greyscale versions, and imagery direction.
Brand voice comes second. This covers tone of voice, key messaging and your value proposition, so written content stays consistent too.
Application examples come third. These show how the brand appears on business cards, email signatures, presentations, social media and signage. In our experience, this section is what stops guidelines from gathering dust. Teams actually use them when they can see real examples.