Brand guidelines are a short document that says what your business looks and sounds like, so everything you make matches. For a small business that means your colours with their exact codes, your typefaces, how the logo may and may not be used, a few words on how you sound, and one or two examples. Two pages is plenty. Plan creates your brand guidelines free — your colours, your typefaces and the guidelines document itself — from a few questions about the look you want.
At a glance
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| What it is | A short document setting out your colours, typefaces, logo rules and tone |
| How long it needs to be | One or two pages for most small businesses |
| Who uses it | Sign writers, printers, whoever builds your website, any freelancer, and you |
| Why it matters | Consistency is what makes a small business look established |
| What it saves you | Re-deciding the same things every time you post, print or sign anything |
| What it costs | Nothing — Plan creates yours free, colours and typefaces included |
What goes in a small business's brand guidelines
Big companies produce these things at eighty pages. You need about two. Here is what actually earns its place.
Your colours, with their codes. Not "blue" — the exact codes, because a printer, a website and a sign maker each need a different format of the same colour. You want the HEX code (a six-character code like #1F4E8C, used for anything on a screen), the RGB values (also for screens, used by some software), and the CMYK values (the four inks a printer mixes). One main colour, one supporting colour and one accent is enough. Any more and you will not use them consistently anyway.
Your typefaces. One for headings, one for body text, and that is genuinely all. Say which weights you use and where. It is worth choosing typefaces that are free and widely available, because a font nobody else can install becomes a problem the first time somebody else makes something for you.
How the logo may be used. The main version, the one-colour version, the version for dark backgrounds, and how much clear space goes around it. Then the short list of things people must not do: stretch it, recolour it, add a drop shadow, put it on a busy photograph, or retype the name in a different font because they could not find the file. Our logo guide covers getting the files in the first place.
How you sound. Three or four lines, with examples. "Plain and direct. We say what a job costs. We never use the word bespoke." That is more useful than a page about brand values, because somebody writing a Facebook post on your behalf can actually follow it.
A couple of examples. What a social post looks like, what the top of a quote looks like. People copy examples far more readily than they read rules.
Why a one-person business needs them at all
Two honest reasons, and neither is about looking professional in the abstract.
Consistency is what makes a small business look established. A customer sees your van, then your Facebook page, then your quote. If those three things share a colour and a typeface, the business reads as real and organised, and organised is what people are buying when they hand over a deposit. If they all look slightly different, the business reads as somebody having a go. Nobody articulates this. Everybody feels it.
It stops you re-deciding. This is the bit people underrate. Without written-down guidelines, every single thing you make becomes a small design decision: which blue was it, which font did I use last time, does the logo go top left or centred. That is ten minutes and a bit of low-level annoyance, forty times a year, and the answers drift each time. With the guidelines open on your phone, it is thirty seconds and the answer is the same as last time.
There is a third reason that shows up later. The first time you hand anything to somebody else — a printer, a freelancer, whoever builds the website — you either send a document or you spend an hour describing what you want and then reject their first attempt.
Who actually uses them
The sign writer doing your van. Wants the vector logo file and the exact colour, so the blue on the van matches the blue on the website. Without that they will pick the nearest vinyl they have in stock.
The printer doing business cards or a banner. Wants the CMYK colours and the vector logo. Screen colours printed straight off often come out flat, which is why the print codes exist.
Whoever builds your website. Wants the HEX codes, the typefaces and the logo files, on day one. Our guide to what a business website needs covers the rest of the brief. If you are building it yourself on a site builder, you are that person, and having it written down is what stops the site looking assembled.
Any freelancer you hire. A virtual assistant doing your social posts, a designer doing a leaflet, a friend making you a shirt.
You, next Tuesday. Genuinely the most frequent user. You are making a Facebook post about a job you finished, and you need to know which blue and which font, without going through eight months of files to find out what you did last time.
A worked example
Take City Florists, a flower subscription business that delivers a bouquet to your door every week for £40, or every fortnight for £22. Its guidelines run to two pages.
The colours: a soft sage green as the main colour, a deep plum as the accent, and a warm off-white for backgrounds, each with its screen code and its print code. The typefaces: one gentle serif for headings, one plain sans-serif for everything else. The logo rules: the full version on white or off-white, the one-colour version on the plum, never the logo printed over a photograph of the flowers because the words disappear. The tone: unhurried and specific, seasonal names for the flowers, no exclamation marks.
The point of it is what happens next. When the founder orders the boxes, the printer gets the plum in CMYK. When she makes a post on a Sunday night, she is not choosing a font. When somebody else covers the social account for a fortnight in August, the posts still look like City Florists. That is the whole return on two pages of decisions.
What Plan creates for you, free
You do not have to write this from scratch, and you do not have to pay for it. Plan asks you a few questions about the look you want — the feeling, not the technical stuff — and puts together your colours, your typefaces and a brand guidelines document.
Create your brand guidelines free with Plan. Answer a few quick questions about the look you want, and Plan puts together your colours, typefaces and a brand guidelines document — free. It takes a few minutes, it runs in your browser, and you can keep the document whether you use anything else in Plan or not.
Keep it short, and keep it where you can find it
Two mistakes to avoid. The first is making it too long: a twenty-page document nobody opens is worth less than one page somebody follows. The second is saving it somewhere you will not look. Put it with your logo files, in cloud storage you can open on your phone, and send it to anybody making anything for you before they start.
Figures correct as of September 2026. Tax thresholds, fees and rates change; check the linked GOV.UK pages before acting. Prices and costs shown are indicative and vary by area and by what's included.
What is Plan?
Plan is a free business operating system for people starting or newly running a UK business. It walks you, one simple step at a time, from your elevator pitch through brand, product and pricing, to a complete business plan — then uses everything it now knows about the business to help with the basics: logo and brand, marketing, a website, a bank account, funding, insurance, company registration. You can use as much or as little as you want.
Frequently asked questions
What are brand guidelines? A short document that says what your business looks and sounds like, so everything you make matches. For a small business it covers your colours with their exact codes, your typefaces, how the logo may and may not be used, a few lines on how you sound, and a couple of examples.
Does a small business really need brand guidelines? Yes, and they are more useful for a one-person business than for a big one. They stop you re-deciding your colours and fonts every time you make a post, a sign or a quote, and they are what you hand to a printer, a sign writer or whoever builds your website so it comes back right first time.
What should brand guidelines include? Colours with their screen codes (HEX or RGB) and print codes (CMYK), one heading typeface and one body typeface, the logo versions and the rules for using them, a few lines on tone of voice, and one or two worked examples. One or two pages is enough for most small businesses.
How much do brand guidelines cost? Plan creates your brand guidelines free — your colours, your typefaces and the guidelines document itself — from a few questions about the look you want. A designer or agency will charge for a fuller set as part of a branding project, which is worth it mainly when your customers buy heavily on how you look.
What is the difference between a logo and brand guidelines? The logo is one piece of artwork. The guidelines are the instructions for everything: which colours go with it, which typefaces, how much space it needs, what nobody may do to it, and how you sound in writing. A logo with no guidelines around it gets used differently everywhere.
Two ways to do this
Create them free in Plan. A few short questions about the look and feel you want, and Plan puts together your colours, your typefaces and a brand guidelines document you can hand to anybody. It runs in your browser, nothing to download, and this can be the only thing you use Plan for.
Or have it designed properly. If you would rather a designer took it on, our sister agency The Fractions can design your brand and build the website that goes with it.