Customer Portal Start Your Project
Start Your Project Customer Portal

Resources · Brand guide

Four files, and
you're covered.

Most businesses don't need a forty-page brand bible. They need a handful of things findable in one place — and this is what happens when they aren't.

Start here

The short version.

If you do nothing else on this page, gather these four and put them somewhere more than one person can reach.

  1. 01

    A vector logo file — AI, EPS, PDF, or SVG.

  2. 02

    A one-colour version of that logo, in black and in white.

  3. 03

    Your colour values written down — HEX, and CMYK if you have it.

  4. 04

    The names of your fonts, and the font files if you can find them.

That covers the great majority of what we ask for. Everything below is detail for when you want the fuller version — or when you are briefing a designer and want to be specific.

In detail

What a guide
actually records.

Four areas. Each one exists because getting it wrong costs time on every job that follows, not just the current one.

Colour that survives the jump to physical

A colour that looks right on your screen is light. The same colour on a shirt, a sign, and a business card is three different materials with three different behaviours. Recording the values up front is what keeps them recognisably the same colour.

One primary, and a short list of secondaries
Three or four colours total is usually plenty. A long palette is harder to hold consistent across materials, not easier.
The values, written down
HEX for screen, CMYK for print, and a spot reference if you have one. Different processes read different values, and guessing a conversion is how colour drifts between jobs.
Which colour does what
Which is the brand colour, which is a background, which is only ever an accent. Without this, every designer makes a reasonable different choice.
Accept where it cannot match exactly
Thread is matched to a chart, not mixed. Vinyl comes in set colours. Uncoated paper absorbs ink and reads softer than coated. We will tell you where the closest achievable match sits — knowing in advance beats discovering it at proof.

Typefaces, and the files to go with them

Fonts are licensed software, not part of your artwork. A layout that references a font nobody else has will silently substitute something else — usually at the worst moment.

A heading face and a body face
Two is enough for most brands. A third is a decision, not a default.
Where the fonts came from
Name the font and the source. "The one that came with the old flyer" is not recoverable when the person who made the flyer has moved on.
Send the font files, or outline the text
Either works. Outlining converts letters to shapes so they cannot substitute — at the cost of no longer being editable text. Send us the files if you want us to be able to fix a typo.
A fallback you are happy with
For the situations where the licensed font genuinely cannot be used. Choosing it yourself is better than someone choosing it for you.

The rules that prevent the awkward conversation

Most brand damage is not dramatic. It is a stretched logo on one sign, a slightly different red on one batch of shirts, and a photo that does not look like the others. A short list of rules prevents nearly all of it.

What must never happen to the logo
Stretched, recoloured, rotated, outlined, drop-shadowed, or rebuilt by hand. Writing it down makes it a rule rather than an opinion.
How it sits on photographs
Which version goes on a dark image, which on a light one, and whether a solid panel behind it is allowed.
Tone in a sentence or two
How you sound — plain, formal, warm, technical. It matters as much on a yard sign as in an email, and it is the part most guides leave out.
Photography direction
Real photos or stock, people or product, bright or moody. Even one line keeps a year of material looking like one brand.

Why it matters

What happens
when it's missing.

None of these are unusual. They are the five situations we meet most often, and each one turns into work before your job can start.

  • Only a website logo exists

    It is capped at screen resolution and cannot be enlarged. Usually it has to be rebuilt as vector before anything can be produced — normal work, but work that happens before your job starts rather than during it.

  • No one-colour version exists

    Embroidery, one-colour print, and anything on a dark garment all need a decision made on the spot. Made at the proof stage by whoever is holding the file, it may not match what you would have chosen.

  • Colour values were never recorded

    Each job matches to whatever the last job used, or to a screen. Two batches printed six months apart drift apart, and nobody can say which one was right.

  • The font is unknown

    Text gets set in the closest available match. It rarely looks wrong on its own — it looks wrong next to the previous piece.

  • Everything exists but lives on one person's laptop

    This is the most common version, and the one that eventually becomes the first situation on this list.

The difference a vector file makes. Full artwork requirements for every product are on the artwork specs page.

Artwork specifications

Start here

Don't have these yet?

Send what you do have. Rebuilding a logo properly is normal work, not a problem — and you end up owning files you can use everywhere afterwards.

  1. 1 Start your project
  2. 2 Tell us what you're creating
  3. 3 Receive your estimate
Start Your Project Customer Portal

Prefer to talk? (217) 970-2300 · Mon–Fri, 8am–5pm