Brand guidelines examples: 10 brand guides to learn from, and what a small brand can skip

You're about to write brand guidelines for a client with one logo, five colors and a modest budget, and every example you find was made for a company whose brand team is bigger than your whole studio. Here's the good news: the best brand guidelines examples aren't good because they're long. Each one solves a specific problem well, and those habits work at any size. Below are ten real, public brand guides you can open today, what each does well, and what to borrow for a small client. Then comes the shorter list: which sections a small brand really needs, and which it can skip.

What makes a brand guide worth learning from?

Here's what we looked for. A good guide:

• Answers a question fast. Someone arrives needing the white logo or the right blue, and the guide gets them there in a click or two.
• Says why, not just what. "Use the stacked logo in small spaces" is a rule. Adding "because the wordmark gets hard to read when it's tiny" makes it a rule people remember.
• Shows the wrong way too. A few misuse examples stop more mistakes than paragraphs do.
• Is dated and kept current. A guide with no date leaves people guessing whether it's the latest.
• Keeps the files next to the rules. A rule about the white logo only helps if the white logo is one click away.

10 brand guidelines examples to learn from

All ten were live and public when we checked them in November 2026, and guides change, so read each description as "as of November 2026". Borrow the habits, not the text: their words belong to them.

1. Dropbox: a full brand site, one word per section

Dropbox's brand guidelines are a full website, but the menu is wonderfully plain: Framework, Voice & Tone, Logo, Typography, Iconography, Color, Imagery, Motion. One word each, so you always know where to click. The color page sorts a big palette into core colors, accents and a ladder of grays, each with a name and a hex code. The voice page boils the brand down to four pillars, and gives each one a short instruction plus a few lines of real copy that show it working.

Borrow this: group a client's colors by job (main, accent, neutral), and pair each voice word with one sentence that tells a writer what to do.

2. Stanford University: organized by what people need to do

Most guides are organized by element: logo, color, type. Stanford's identity guide opens with tasks instead. Its home page reads like a list of things a staff member might need today: order business cards, bring a website on brand, set up a department's social profile, or generate a logo package for a department. With many schools and departments sharing one brand, that's a smart way in, because people find the answer through the job in front of them.

Borrow this: put a short "I need to..." list at the top of a client's guide. "Send our logo to a printer." "Make an Instagram post." "Write an event bio." Each line points to the right section.

3. Asana: a whole logo guide on one page

Asana's brand page shows how much fits on one short page. It covers the main logo and when to use the vertical version instead, clear space (measured with the logo's own symbol, so nobody needs a ruler), the approved color combinations, a list of don'ts, and how to place the logo beside a partner's. There's a "last updated" date on the page, and a PDF for anyone who wants a file.

Borrow this: a clear-space rule based on part of the logo itself, one line on co-branding, and a date at the bottom.

4. Shopify: a reason for every logo version

Shopify's "Using our brand" page doesn't just list logo versions; it says when each one is the right choice. The one-color versions come with the situations that call for them, like single-color printing or a busy background. It gives one minimum size for screens and another for print, and ends with a short gallery of don'ts.

Borrow this: for every logo version you hand over, write the situation it's for. Give minimum sizes in pixels and in millimeters or inches, since your client's printer and web person think in different units.

5. Discord: short, playful, and still clear

Discord's branding page proves a guide can sound like the brand. It's short: logo downloads in color, black and white, when to use the symbol alone, a clear-space rule, a three-color palette, some banners, and a plain-spoken legal section. The headings are funny, and the rules are still unmistakable. A link to a fuller creative toolkit waits at the bottom for people who need more.

Borrow this: let a playful client's guide be playful. A small palette, a few firm rules and a link to the full kit can be the whole thing.

6. Ubuntu: colors with jobs and proportions

Ubuntu's brand pages open with the brand's values before they get to logos. The color palette page is the one to study: colors are grouped by purpose, each has codes for screen and print (with Pantone references where they exist), and tints are listed in steps. It also shows how much of each color to use, and how that balance shifts between community work and work for Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu.

Borrow this: proportions. "Mostly Oat, some Harbor Navy, a flash of Copper" tells a designer more than five equal swatches do. It's also a tidy way to show how a sub-brand differs from its parent.

7. Wikimedia Foundation: the why and the history

The Wikimedia Foundation's visual identity guidelines, which cover Wikipedia's marks, start by explaining why the guidelines exist and how the puzzle globe came to be. Each element (the globe, the wordmark, the smaller icons) then gets its own section, including the situations it was made for, like tight digital spaces. Practical rules on sizing, color, misuse and co-branding come last.

Borrow this: one sentence of history and one sentence of purpose for each element. People bend rules they don't understand and respect the ones they do.

8. Mailchimp's content style guide: voice versus tone

Mailchimp's Content Style Guide is the classic for writing. Its voice and tone page separates the two: the voice stays the same, while the tone shifts with the reader's mood, so someone confused or worried gets a calmer, clearer message than someone celebrating. The rest covers grammar, accessibility, email, social media and more, plus a word list.

Borrow this: a line on how the client's tone changes in hard moments: a late order, a complaint, a price rise. Our tone of voice examples show how to write voice words that hold up.

9. GOV.UK: an A to Z of small decisions

The GOV.UK A to Z style guide is a long alphabetical list of the small writing decisions that otherwise get argued about forever: how to write numbers, when to use capitals, how to address the reader, which words to avoid. Each entry is short, and some point to others.

Borrow this: a mini A to Z for each client. Ten entries is plenty: how to write the business name and product names, prices, dates, and the words they never use.

10. Spotify: rules for people who show your brand

Spotify's design guidelines for developers are written for outsiders: the developers who show Spotify's logo, artwork and content inside their own apps. They cover how to credit Spotify, why artwork shouldn't be cropped or covered, logo sizes and exclusion zones, color rules and naming.

Borrow this: a short "If you're featuring us" section. For a photographer like Studio Afterglow, that's the photo credit line and how to tag the studio. For Northline Coffee, it's how wholesale cafés should show the badge on their menus.

The ten at a glance

Which sections does a small brand really need?

Big guides cover dozens of topics because big brands have dozens of teams. A small client has a founder, a part-time marketer, a printer and a few partners. Here's what they need.

Everything in the "need" rows fits on one to five pages. Our one-page brand style guide shows the shortest version with a filled-in example, and brand guidelines, style guide or brand kit explains when a client has outgrown it. For the full structure, section by section, that you can reuse for every client, see our brand guidelines template for agencies.

Drafting a client's first guide with Tabitha

The slow part of a guide is usually collecting the facts: the real logo, the exact hex codes, the font names, the current tagline. That's where Tabitha, BrandTab's assistant, helps.

Say Northline Coffee hires you. Give Tabitha northline.example, and she reads up to eight public pages of the site. She comes back with suggestions: the wordmark and the round badge, each with a role; Harbor Navy #22303F, Copper #B4693C and Oat #E9DFCF, named and coded; the fonts, and whether they come from Google Fonts or Adobe Fonts; the tagline "Small-batch coffee, roasted on the coast"; a short summary, tone words and voice notes; and Theo Lund's contact details. You tick what's right and untick what isn't. Nothing is saved until you add it.

If the client sends a folder instead, she sorts it (up to 300 files), groups the versions of each logo, keeps the newest and sharpest, and reads the first 20 pages of one brand guide PDF for colors, typefaces and voice. Handy when an old PDF is the only place the Pantone numbers survive.

From there, BrandTab builds the brand sheet for you: the logo suite on the backgrounds you chose, with each version's usage note; the palette with HEX, RGB and CMYK; the typefaces; the tone words, voice guidelines and usage rules; and a few photos. It's dated, saves as a PDF in letter or A4, and on the Creative and Studio plans shares as one link that always shows the brand as it is now. That leaves you the part that needs a designer: the rules, the reasons and the judgment.

Questions people ask

What are good examples of brand guidelines?

Dropbox, Stanford, Asana, Shopify, Discord, Ubuntu, the Wikimedia Foundation, Mailchimp's content style guide, GOV.UK's A to Z and Spotify's developer guidelines are all public and worth studying, each for something different. Look at how they're organized rather than how long they are.

What should brand guidelines include?

At minimum: logo versions and where each goes, clear space and smallest size, colors with names and codes, fonts with fallbacks, tone words with examples, the tagline and a short bio, a few don'ts, a date and a contact. Bigger brands add strategy, imagery, applications and legal terms.

How many pages should brand guidelines be?

For a small brand, one to five pages. Asana fits its logo rules on one web page and Discord's branding page is short, so length isn't what makes a guide good.

Can I copy another company's brand guidelines?

Borrow the structure, not the content. Most guides are copyrighted, and even the open ones have terms: Mailchimp's content style guide, for example, uses a Creative Commons license that doesn't cover commercial use (as of November 2026). Write your client's guide in their own words.