Free brand guidelines template

Brand guidelines are the reference that keeps a brand recognisable wherever it appears. They tell anyone producing work how the brand should look and sound, so the result is consistent whether it comes from head office, a local team, or an agency. The hard part is not writing them once but keeping them used.

A practical template covers six areas. Logo use: the approved versions, clear space, and what not to do. Colour: the palette with exact values and how the colours are combined. Typography: the typefaces, weights, and hierarchy. Voice and tone: how the brand speaks, with a few before and after examples. Imagery: the style of photography and graphics that fit the brand. And usage: where each element may and may not be used. Keep each section short and lead with examples, because people copy examples far more readily than they read rules.

Guidelines drift when the assets they describe live somewhere else. A logo file gets an unofficial edit, an old colour sneaks back, a font is substituted because the right one was not to hand. The fix is to keep the assets and the guidelines connected, so the approved element is always the one within reach.

Cohiva Campaign holds brand assets in a library with version control and usage-rights tracking, covering logos, brand colours, typography, photography, templates, icons, and video. The current approved version is the one people find, a request-to-use flow gates unapproved uploads so the library stays clean, and downloads use time-limited links rather than public URLs.

Guidelines become a control rather than a document when they are tied to how campaigns are produced. In a multi-location or franchise network, field locks can fix the brand elements on a campaign so a local team adapts the open detail without touching the locked creative, the key message, or the compliance requirements. A usage-rights confirmation can sit on the go-live checklist, so an expired or off-brand asset is caught before launch. The guidelines, in other words, stop being a PDF nobody opens and start being the way the work is actually made. Start a free trial of Cohiva Campaign to put a non-bypassable go-live gate behind every launch.