Sections of a rulebook
| Section | What it settles | Who checks it most |
|---|---|---|
| Logo | Versions, clear space, smallest sizes, backgrounds, misuse | Printers, sign shops, event staff |
| Typography | Typefaces, the size scale, weights, fallbacks for office tools | Anyone building slides or documents |
| Color | Values for screen, print and paint, proportions, safe text pairings | Web team, designers, vendors |
| Imagery | Photo style, what to avoid, icon and illustration rules | Marketing, social, recruiting |
| Voice | How the company sounds, words to use and skip, before and after rewrites | Everyone who writes |
| Templates | Which file to start from for each common job | Sales, operations, new hires |
Written for the people who use it
Most guidelines are written for designers and read by everyone else. We write ours the other way round. A sales manager making a deck at 10 p.m. needs one answer, fast, with a picture. A sign shop needs exact values and file names. A new marketing hire needs the reasoning, so they can make a good call on something the book doesn't cover.
So each rule gets a short statement, a drawing with its measurement, and where it helps, a correct and an incorrect example side by side. Longer explanations go in a note under the rule, for the people who want them.
Length
A rulebook should be as short as the company allows. A single-location business may need twenty pages. A company with several offices, product lines or co-branding partners needs more, mostly in the templates and co-branding sections. We'd rather cut a rule nobody breaks than pad the book with pages nobody reads.
Formats
You get a PDF laid out for screens and for letter paper, plus the source files so your team can update it. On request we also build a private web version with a page per section, so staff can search it and paste a link to the exact rule in a chat thread. Both versions come from the same content, so they stay in step.
Keeping it current
A rulebook goes stale when the company changes and the book doesn't. Each section carries a version note and an owner, and the last page lists what to review when you open an office, add a product line or rebuild the website. If you'd like us to handle updates, we quote those separately when they come up.
Common questions
Can the guidelines cover a sub-brand or a product line?
Yes. We add a section that shows how the sub-brand sits next to the parent: which elements it shares, which it changes, and how the two logos appear together.
Do you write rules for a brand you didn't design?
Yes, that is most of our work. We start from the identity you have, tidy the files where needed and write the rules around it.