What goes in brand guidelines (and the 5 pages people actually use)

Brand guidelines, also called a brand book, are the written rules for using your identity so that anyone, inside or outside the business, can produce material that looks like you. A complete set covers the brand foundation and voice, the logo and its versions, clear space and minimum sizes, colour codes for print and for screens, Arabic and English typography, graphic elements such as patterns and illustration, photography, layout, and one page for each real application, from the shop sign to the Instagram post. In Kuwait it should be written in Arabic and English, because the people who use it read either.

In practice, most suppliers open only five pages: the logo files and spacing, the colour codes, the fonts, the do and don't examples, and the application page that matches their job. Those five deserve most of your attention. The rest of the document exists so those five pages make sense. If you are still deciding whether you need a full identity at all, start with our guide on logo vs brand identity.

Foundation opens the book: a short paragraph on what the business is, who it serves and how it should feel, plus a few values written as behaviour rather than slogans. Voice follows, with sample lines in Arabic and English showing how the brand writes a caption, a product description and a reply to a complaint on WhatsApp. Keep both short; nobody reads three pages of mission statement.

Logo is the core chapter. It shows the primary lockup, the compact version, the icon, the Arabic and English arrangements, the one-colour and reversed versions, the clear space around the mark, the minimum printed and on-screen sizes, and the misuses to avoid. A careful logo design project produces most of this material already; the guideline simply records it.

Colour lists each colour with its role and its values: CMYK and a Pantone reference for print, RGB and HEX for screens, and notes on which colours may sit on which backgrounds. Typography names the Arabic and Latin typefaces, the weights, and the hierarchy for headlines, body and small print, with a sample showing the two scripts together. Graphic elements cover patterns, illustration style, icons and any stamp or seal. Photography describes lighting, backgrounds and what to avoid. Layout gives grids and margins for posts, posters and pages.

Applications close the book, one page per real item: business card, letterhead, shop sign, window vinyl, uniform, bag, box, menu, delivery sticker, social templates, app icon and splash screen, whatever is on your list. The final page is a file index that tells people where each file lives and which format to use.

Page one: logo files and spacing. Everyone opens this. The printer wants the right file, the sign maker wants the clear space so the mark does not touch the edge of the light box, and the social team wants to know the smallest size before the Arabic stops reading. Put the minimum sizes in millimetres and in pixels on the same page, and link straight to the files. Our guide to logo file formats explains which file each supplier should get.

Page two: colour codes. This is the page that saves the most money, because a wrong colour on a large print run or a full storefront is expensive to redo. Show each colour as a swatch with its CMYK, Pantone, RGB and HEX values side by side, and state which values belong to which medium. If you have not chosen your palette yet, our guide to brand colours for the Kuwait market covers print, screen and sun.

Page three: fonts. List the Arabic and English fonts, where to get them and the licence, and show a real bilingual sample: a headline, a price and a line of body text in both scripts. This is the page that stops a new designer from typing your Arabic in whatever font came with their laptop. Pairing the two scripts well is a subject of its own, covered in our guide to Arabic fonts for bilingual brands.

Page four: do and don't. Show the logo stretched, recoloured, placed on a busy photo, squeezed beside another logo, and crossed out each time, next to the correct version. People skim words but they notice a red cross. Page five: the application that matches the job. The sign maker in Shuwaikh opens the storefront page, the person uploading the menu to Talabat opens the menu page, and the developer opens the app icon page. Each of those pages should be complete enough to brief that one supplier without a phone call.

A guideline written only in English leaves out half the people who will use it. In Kuwait your printer, sign maker, cashier, branch manager or freelance photographer may each prefer a different language, and the rules about Arabic type are easier to explain in Arabic. Write each page in both languages, side by side or as two matching editions, and keep the technical values identical in both.

Bilingual guidelines also force decisions that English-only documents skip. Which script leads on the shop sign? Does the Arabic headline sit right-aligned while the English sits left, or are both centred? How do prices appear on a bilingual menu? What happens to the logo lockup on a right-to-left app screen? Answering these once in the book prevents the same argument with every supplier. Our Arabic logo design page explains how we balance the two scripts in the mark itself.

Keep the voice section bilingual in substance, not just translated. The way your brand says thank you in a Kuwaiti Arabic caption is not a word-for-word copy of the English, and the guideline should show both as they would really be written.

You can write a working guideline without a designer, and for a small business it is worth doing this week. Include logo spacing, colour codes for print and screen, your fonts, a page of do and don't examples, and one page per application you actually use. Write it in Arabic and English. That is the whole recipe, and it will fit in a short PDF.

Some practical tips. Measure clear space using a part of the logo itself, such as the height of one letter, so it scales at any size. Get the print colour values from your printer's proof rather than guessing them from a screen. Photograph your real sign, bag and cup and put those photos on the application pages, with notes on what went right and wrong. Save everything in one shared folder and name the files clearly, because a guideline that points to a missing file is useless.

Then give it an owner. Someone in the business should be responsible for updating it when you open a branch, change a supplier or launch a Ramadan look, and for sending it to every new supplier before they start.

Guidelines only work if the applications in them were really designed. A book that shows the logo on a generic business card mock-up, then says use the brand consistently on packaging, has not solved the packaging. The printer still has to make the decisions, and every printer will make them differently. The useful pages are the ones where someone already worked out the box, the sign or the menu at its real size.

That is why we ship guidelines with the identity, from the same files. For Kuwait Bookstore, the brand book sits alongside a custom serif wordmark, a KB ink-stamp mark, a pattern, a tone of voice, bilingual type and the bookmarks, bags and envelopes themselves. For Nawat, the brand book came with the bilingual wordmark, a custom display font, flavour colours, social templates and the cups and pouches. In both, the guideline describes things that exist, not things someone will have to invent later.

Digital products need their own version of this. For Ordenaire, restaurant ordering software, the identity grew into the Ordemark design system: colours, type, cards, spacing and icons a product team can build on. If your brand lives in an app or a dashboard, that kind of system is what our UI/UX design work produces.

A guideline is most useful as a PDF that opens on a phone, plus a shared folder with every file it mentions. Large printed brand books look impressive on a shelf but rarely reach the person at the printing press. Keep the PDF short enough to send on WhatsApp, and put the version number and date on the cover so suppliers know they have the current one.

Plan updates around the moments that stretch a brand. A new branch adds a sign and maybe a different storefront format. Ramadan and Eid often bring gift packaging and a seasonal feed. A move into delivery adds bags, stickers and listing images. Each of those deserves a new application page rather than a one-off design that lives only in someone's downloads folder. If a fuller refresh is due, our rebranding page explains when an update becomes a rebrand.

Finally, remember that the guideline governs how the brand looks, not who owns it. Protecting the name and mark is a Ministry of Commerce and Industry process; our overview of trademark registration in Kuwait is a starting point, not legal advice.

In our projects the guideline is not a separate product bolted on at the end. It is written as the identity is built, and it is finished in Week 3, alongside the applications it describes. The whole branding project runs 2–3 weeks from the signed brief to the final files: Week 1 brief and direction, Week 2 the identity, Week 3 applications and handover. The price is quoted per scope and fixed before work starts, so the number of application pages is agreed up front.

You receive the bilingual PDF, the shared folder of source files, and application pages for the surfaces on your list. If you want to see how that looks for a business like yours, the branding hub has the full process, and you can message us on WhatsApp with your list of surfaces to get a fixed scope.