Brand guidelines examples: what NASA, GOV.UK and Cambridge publish, and what to borrow

Brand guidelines examples that organisations publish for their own staff

Most brand guidelines examples found in a quick search are mock-ups made to sell a template. The useful ones are the rulebooks organisations write for their own staff, printers and partners and then publish. GOV.UK, the UK government’s website, does this, and so do NASA, the University of Cambridge and Mozilla. Their pages are written for people who apply the rules on a deadline, not for a portfolio.

Read together, they cover the same ground: logo and clear space, colour codes, typefaces, photography, voice, templates and who may use the mark. Most of the text is plain instruction. Rules often come with a correct and an incorrect version side by side. A ten-page guide for a small firm can meet that standard too.

Logo rules in NASA’s insignia guide and the GOV.UK wordmark

NASA’s brand guidelines open with a lesson in continuity. The round insignia, nicknamed the meatball, was adopted in 1959, set aside from 1976 to 1992 while the worm logotype served as the official logo, and reinstated in 1992. It must now appear on all agency publications and displays. Its preferred ground is plain white, black, grey or silver, and photographs are allowed as long as contrast is maintained.

One NASA detail suits any uneven logo. Because the insignia is not symmetrical, the page says to centre it on its blue sphere rather than on the whole shape. Its protected space is counted in a unit the page calls N, not in millimetres, so the rule scales with the logo. Cambridge uses its coat of arms the same way: the clear space equals the width of the arms, and the logo is never narrower than 30 millimetres in print or 85 pixels online.

GOV.UK builds the same rule around a dot. Its logo has two parts, the wordmark and the crown, and the clear space is defined by the size of the dot in the wordmark. The minimum widths are 50 pixels for the wordmark and 16 for the crown, with a small crown version for favicons. The banned uses are concrete: no stretching, no drop shadows or effects, no flipping and no busy or low-contrast backgrounds.

Colour codes for print and screen in the Cambridge and GOV.UK palettes

Cambridge anchors its 24 colours on Cambridge Blue and lists it four ways: Pantone 7471, hex #8EE8D8, RGB 142 232 216 and CMYK 48 0 27 0. The rule under the table: CMYK or Pantone in print, RGB on screens, and print jobs proofed against a printed Pantone chip. GOV.UK gives its Primary blue as #1D70B8 on the web and as CMYK 84 39 0 28 with the ink reference 7461 C in print. Its palette colours are never altered, and new ones are not created.

The GOV.UK Design System adds a habit any website can copy. Developers are told not to paste hex values into code but to call a colour by its purpose, such as brand, so the service picks up the most recent palette whenever it updates. For a small company, the equivalent is one colour table with four codes per colour and a role for each: text, background or accent. A later change of shade then takes one edit, not a hunt through every page.

Contrast rules from the W3C that brand colours cannot override

Accessibility is where a brand guide meets a standard it does not control. The W3C criterion 1.4.3 of WCAG 2.2 asks for a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 between text and its background, and 3:1 for large text, meaning at least 18 point, or 14 point bold. Text that is part of a logo or brand name has no contrast requirement. The ratios are not rounded, so 4.499:1 fails.

Further down, the W3C explanation adds the sentence a brand owner should read twice: beyond logos, text with insufficient contrast because of brand guidelines is not exempted. GOV.UK writes this into its brand, requiring WCAG 2.2 level AA and reminding teams that they remain responsible for the colour combinations they choose. When a logo works as a link, the W3C suggests a variant with enough contrast. So a guide should list the text and background pairs that pass.

Typefaces and fallback fonts in the GOV.UK, Cambridge and NASA guides

GOV.UK uses GDS Transport, based on the 1960s typeface made for UK road signs and adapted for digital use in 2012. The GOV.UK Design System ties it to a place: services on the service.gov.uk subdomain must use it, and services elsewhere use another typeface. NASA, for its part, bans decorative or novelty fonts for the agency name. A font can belong to one owner and one context, so a guide should say where its fonts may be used.

Cambridge pairs Feijoa for headlines with Open Sans for body text, and plans for missing fonts. When an app cannot use them, for example a presentation opened on an outside computer, staff fall back to Arial, and Office files can be saved with the fonts embedded. The minimum text size is 16 pixels on screen and 10 points in print. A small business needs the same few lines: two typefaces, a fallback every laptop has, and minimum sizes.

Photography and voice rules from Cambridge and GOV.UK guidance

Cambridge’s photography style centres on people: it is candid and captures real moments. People are shown in their actual working environments, portraits are relaxed rather than staged, and natural light is preferred. Studio shots, stylised lighting, monochrome and filters are on the avoid list. The University also does not use photography created by AI tools, so that its audiences see accurate images of Cambridge.

GOV.UK guidance treats the written voice the same way. Its tone is specific, informative, clear and concise, and serious but not pompous; writers address the user as you and prefer the active voice. Plain English is mandatory, and the clear-language page cites data showing that 1 in 6 adults in England have very poor literacy skills. It swaps buy for purchase, keeps paragraphs to five sentences and splits sentences over 25 words. Ten rules like these do more for a small business than three adjectives about personality.

Templates, logo permissions and a short guide that stays current

Rules alone do not keep a brand consistent; ready-made files do. Cambridge offers templates for banners, brochures, business cards, posters, presentations, reports and letterheads, so staff fill in content instead of designing. Its email signature is plain black 12-point Arial with no images, because logos and banners in signatures are routinely blocked or displayed incorrectly. GOV.UK keeps its brand asset files in one repository on GitHub, so the current version has one address.

A public guide also says who may use the mark. The Mozilla Trademark Guidelines allow truthful references to Mozilla products without permission, and require prior written permission for other uses, including domain names. Allowed uses must not modify the logo or show it more prominently than the user’s own name. Cambridge asks third parties to request permission and not to use its logo for endorsement in case studies or testimonials. Whether your own mark is protected by law is a question for a trademark specialist in your country.

Together, these examples suggest a small-business guide of about a dozen pages: logo versions, a colour table, two fonts and a fallback, photo rules, word swaps, working templates and a note on permissions. Keeping it current is a habit, not a matter of size. NASA’s page shows the date of its last update and calls its list of violations subject to changes and additions. A small guide needs one owner, one link to the current files and a date on the first page.

What to prepare before ordering brand guidelines, and when to write your own

Whoever writes the guide, the material comes from the business. Collect the logo files you have, ideally the original vector files, and list every place the brand appears, from the website to invoices. Note the colours and fonts in use today, even where they disagree. Add the photographs you own the rights to, three texts that sound right, and the people who will use the guide, from the printer to a freelance social media manager.

Writing the guide in-house works when one person designs everything, the logo is settled and the brand lives mostly on one website. The examples above give the structure. Ordering makes sense when several people or suppliers produce materials, when the logo needs small and one-colour versions, when print and screen colours must match, or when templates have to be built. Then ask for working files, not a PDF alone: master logos, the colour table, editable templates and the source of the guide.

VITON13 Studio prepares brand guidelines for businesses in any country, working remotely from the logo and materials a client already has. The guides linked below cover the price and the line between a logo and a full identity. Bring the list above to the first conversation, so that scope, timeline and price can be agreed in writing before design starts. The brand guidelines examples in this story then become a checklist for your own.