A brand book becomes necessary the moment a brand outgrows a single head: contractors, a new designer, the print shop and the social media manager all need to get the same picture without a fresh explanation every time. A small business with one sales channel can start with a 5 to 10 page logo book, while a full brand book with a brand platform and applications makes sense once there is a team, paid advertising and at least two communication channels. Below we cover how a brand book differs from brand guidelines, what goes inside, how long the work takes, the rough price range, and what to look at when accepting the result.
These three terms get mixed up all the time, and studios often use one to mean another. The difference is depth: a logo book describes only the mark, brand guidelines add the whole visual system, and a brand book also explains why the brand exists and how it speaks.
| Document | What is inside | Size | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Logo book | Logo and rules for using it | 5-15 pages | Startup, local business |
| Style guide | Logo book + palette, fonts, photos, media | 20-50 pages | Several channels and contractors |
| Brand book | Style guide + brand platform | 40-100+ pages | Marketing team, franchise |
The word "identity" stands apart: it is not a document but the visual system itself, which the documents describe. Identity is designed, the brand book records it. Asking for "a 40-page identity" is like asking for "a house in PDF format".
The section that separates a brand book from guidelines. It describes who the brand is for, how it differs from its neighbors on the shelf, which values stand behind the product and how the brand speaks: formally or casually, with humor or without. A tone of voice with "we write like this / not like this" examples saves you from the situation where the website speaks in one voice and the newsletter in another.
The primary version, horizontal and vertical layouts, monochrome, an inverted version for dark backgrounds, the mark without text for an app icon. Clear space is the zone around the logo where nothing else may be placed, usually defined by the height of a letter or an element of the mark. Minimum sizes for print and screen, and a mandatory misuse page: no stretching, no color changes, no placing on busy photos.
Primary and secondary colors with codes in four systems: HEX and RGB for screens, CMYK for print, Pantone for branded merchandise. The same red without a code will come out different at the print shop. It helps when proportions are specified: how much primary color, how much accent, how much neutral.
Heading and body typefaces, weights, sizes for web and print, line spacing. Separately, a system fallback: the font to use in Word and Google Docs when the brand font is unavailable. And the license: whether the typeface may be used on the web, in an app, in advertising.
Examples of "yes" and "no": real people or staged shots, warm or cold light, retouching, cropping. Without this section every new designer pulls stock photos to their own taste, and a year later the website looks like three different companies.
Icon style (outline or filled, stroke weight, corner radius), patterns, shapes, frames. If the product has an interface, the icons in the brand book and the icons for the website must come from the same set, otherwise the site and the advertising drift apart.
Ready templates, not just rules: business cards and letterheads, social media covers and avatars, a presentation template, an email signature, ad layouts, sample website pages, and where relevant uniforms, packaging, signage, vehicles. The more applications are in real use, the more of them belong in the document.
Signs that it is time for the full document: more than one person in the company produces layouts; there is advertising with a budget; there is a chain, a franchise or dealers who make their own materials; a rebrand or a new market launch is planned; the product has an app or a large website where developers need a design system. In that situation we at Query recommend building the brand book together with the website design: the site becomes the largest application, and it is convenient when the same people run both projects.
A logo book is enough if the business is young, layouts are made by one person or one studio, and there are one or two communication channels. In that case the money for 80 pages of brand platform is better invested in the product, and you can return to the brand book a year later, when there is real practice worth recording.
Rough timelines: a logo book from 2 weeks, brand guidelines 4 to 6 weeks, a full brand book with a brand platform 6 to 10 weeks. Half of that time usually goes to approvals rather than drawing, so the pace depends on how quickly the client gives feedback.
Prices without exact figures, because the spread is enormous. As of publication, in the Ukrainian market a logo book from a freelancer or a small studio starts at a few hundred dollars, brand guidelines from one or two thousand, a brand book with a brand platform from several thousand, and at large branding agencies the bill runs into tens of thousands. The cheapest option often turns out to be the most expensive in the end: a bargain logo with no source files and no rules has to be redrawn a year later.
What drives the price: the number of applications, the depth of the strategic part, the number of concepts and revision rounds, the need for 3D, logo animation, illustrations, and whether the team includes a copywriter for the tone of voice. Our identity and website work is collected in our case studies: there you can see how a brand book carries over into a website and advertising.
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