What is the difference between a logobook, guideline, and brand book?

A logobook covers only the logo and rules for its use. A guideline adds the full identity — colors, fonts, patterns, and advertising layout standards. A brand book includes everything in a guideline plus the full brand platform: positioning, target audience, brand benefits, mission, and essence.

What is the order of brand book development elements?

Brand book development follows five stages: 1) Positioning and brand platform (strategic stage), 2) Naming — the brand name, legend and slogan (creative stage), 3) Logo development (design stage), 4) Identity — colors, fonts, patterns and all brand elements (design stage), 5) Brand book — the document that contains all of the above with rules for use.

Brand identity

Updated June 2026 · 10 min read

Brand book
development

Q: Who needs brand book development?

You need brand book development if your logo looks outdated, you are launching a new project with nothing that describes the brand, your designer constantly makes layouts not as you would like, you are tired of explaining your brand to each new employee, or competitors are catching up and you need to detach from them.

Q: Is the brand book already a brand?

Even the coolest brandbook will not make a company a brand. The brand book will set the direction — it will tell you what to talk about and how to look. But a brand is built through integrated communications where you convey your positioning to the audience through creative ideas over time.

Q: What is required from a client to make a brand book?

Brand book development is a team effort. Throughout the project there will be interviews, observations, analytics, focus groups with clients, and many questions. No one knows your company, your market, your product, or your customer better than you — that knowledge is essential to building a real brand book.

An official document of your company that breaks down your brand into small components and dictates how to use them correctly.

Order a brand book → What’s inside

What is brand book development

What is a brand book development and why is it needed?

A brand book is an official document of your company that breaks down your brand into small components and dictates how to use them correctly.

Globally, the brand book should contain the brand platform (the company and its services, the essence of the brand, positioning, target audience, its needs, emotional and functional benefits of the brand, attributes, slogan, mission, vision, and possibly even a brand legend) and identity (logo, colors, fonts, pattern, and other design elements), as well as the rules for its use. Brandbook development implies all this.

Who needs brand book development

Who needs a brand book and why is it needed?

Problem 1 of 5

Your logo looks completely outdated, as if from the last millennium, and even looks retro — the colors also look bad.

Decision

You need a rebranding. But so that you are not left with a beautiful picture that will repel customers, it is better to start development from the brand platform, and then put these meanings into the updated corporate identity. The brand book will help to implement the update quickly and efficiently, and then maintain the created concept and carry it through the years.

Problem 2 of 5

You are creating a new project, but you have nothing that describes the brand.

Decision

In this case, the development of a brand book will be equal to the creation of a brand and the foundation of its future development. You launch a project in a most likely formed market, and to be different, stand out, be relevant, and noticeable — is your key task.

Problem 3 of 5

Your designer constantly makes crooked layouts, not as you would like, and you spend a lot of energy explaining what should be on a banner and how much the logo needs to be enlarged.

Decision

You need a brand book that will fix the rules for using all the key elements of the identity (even the size and scope). It may even fix the standards of basic advertising layouts, so that the skeleton is always unchanged, and the creative is placed in a given field.

Problem 4 of 5

You are tired of explaining to each new employee what kind of company you are, why you work, what brand image you build, and which folder contains the logo.

Decision

The brand book in your case will describe the entire brand from cover to cover, and you just have to hand it over to a new employee (or drop it in a telegram), and he will understand everything without further ado.

Problem 5 of 5

You feel competitors coming on your heels and understand that you need to detach from them by what you say about yourself and how you present yourself.

Decision

In this case, you need a rebranding, during which the brand platform will be developed and the corporate identity updated. The brand book here will be the final stage of development and will become your assistant in introducing it into the real world.

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Terminology

Brandbook, logo book, guideline, and guidebook — brand book development: are they synonyms?

So, you have a problem, and you need a solution. The brand book, as it turned out, will solve the problem. However, you have heard that there are also logbooks and guidelines. Let’s figure out what all these words mean.

Logobook

Logo and rules for its use

Guideline (Guidebook)

Logo and rules for its use

Identity (colors, fonts, pattern, style-forming elements, standards of advertising layouts) and rules for its use

Full package

Brand book

Logo and rules for its use

Corporate identity and rules for its use

Brand platform (company, services, essence, positioning, target audience, emotional and functional benefits, attributes, slogan, mission, vision, brand legend)

Order a brand book →

Now you understand that a logo book is just a guard against misuse and distortion of the look of your logo for designers.

A guideline is the same logo book, only supplemented by a full-fledged identity. That’s why, without seeing the billboard yet, you can tell from afar what brand it is — it’s all the style and standards for its use.

The brand book is all of the above, supplemented by the most important information about your company. The brand book is the foundation, the document that enshrines the standards of your brand and the direction of its development. This is the essence of your brand on paper.

Brand book development process

The order of brand book development elements

Brand book development for Proud Clinic

In this article, we tell you about creating a brand book from scratch in case you have nothing. Or there is a vision, but it is somewhere in the head between the quarterly report to the tax and the distribution strategy, and it needs to be put as a basis, having built on all the necessary tools.

Of course, you may have a ready-made positioning, or you may not want to change the current logo, or it is important to keep the legend that you have been implementing for a couple of decades, but update its interpretation.

All these inputs are taken into account after the initial briefing (meeting to clarify the problem). And only on the basis of an understanding of the scope of work, an action plan is built, an agreement is drawn up and signed.

But so that you understand the correctness of the actions, let’s imagine that we are creating a brand from scratch and all stages are needed for it. So, in a nutshell, what is being developed and after which, and where is the development of the brand book here:

Strategic stage

Positioning and brand platform

Creative stage

Naming (name) of the brand

Design stage

Logo

Design stage

Identity

Output

Brand book

Brandbook development: the process

We will try to summarize what we are doing to create each of the elements so that you understand how the brand book will meet your needs and will be useful to you.

Positioning is a functional and emotional niche in the mind of the consumer.

Different positioning divides brands according to their communication and the image built through all the contacts of the brand with the audience into certain groups. Proper positioning allows you to occupy a less competitive niche in which you can show your advantages and at the same time will be as relevant to the audience as possible.

In other words, finding good positioning is to understand what problem we can rid the audience of with the uniqueness of the product so that someone else has not done it before us.

The target audience of the brand and its needs (emotional and functional), insight
Brand benefits that address these needs (emotional and functional)
RTB (reason to believe) or brand attributes
Brand values, brand personality, character, tonality
The brand’s mission
Positioning — competitive advantage relevant to the brand
The essence — a short description of the brand

We analyze:

Companies (structure, resources, growth opportunities, management, personnel, ongoing marketing, product, service)
Brand (communication, media publications, visual identity, image)
Market (best experience, trends)
Competitors (positioning, product, strengths, and weaknesses)
Audiences (current consumers, potential target audience, employees)

We use tools:

Interview
Observations
Focus groups
Desk analysis (audit, data analysis, free access research)

When the brand pyramid is ready, elements are born from it, which are directly broadcast to the audience. This is what she can literally see and read.

Brand Legend — a story that the brand will tell about itself and its journey
Brand slogan — a capacious brand promise or statement
Brand name — the name that should become a brand

This process is the task of the creative department, but it also has its own methodology at each of the stages:

Creative assault
Filtering ideas
Check for protectability

Brand book development for Proud Clinic

The logo is the visual image of the company, it must certainly correspond to the essence of the brand, but it must also correspond to the market and its trends.

Solves the problem, matches the positioning, and is visually relevant — this is the formula for a good logo. We always start developing a logo with a design analysis, during which we determine how we should be in the category of the chosen positioning and differ from competitors.

We are working on 3 logo concepts, from which the client chooses the one that best suits his preferences. However, each of the logos solves the client’s problem.

Branded graphics:

Patterns
Pictograms

Elements of business documents:

Form
Business card
Envelope
Folder
Personal signature
Fashion products (notebook, pen, cup, etc.)

Identity is all design attributes that will shape the image of your brand. You may be surprised, but your brand will be blue or green will already say a lot about the brand to your consumer.

Identity elements are always an individual list that is formed depending on the needs of the business. The more elements with which the client directly contacts create a visual concept (all in one style), the faster and more efficiently the client “learns” and forms a recognizable image of your brand in his mind.

Within the identity, corporate colors and fonts are always developed.

Internal navigation:

Door signs
Navigation bar
Room map
Pointers
Badge
Staff uniform

External identification:

Scheme of building a sign
Working hours
Pointers
Flag
Car branding

Examples of brandbook development

Our brandbook work

What a brand book development includes

Brandbook development — content

A brandbook is a document, a book that contains all the developments that we wrote about above, but also gives the rules for their use. The brandbook is the bible of your brand. Everyone who works to create a strong brand for your company will live on it for many years.

Brand

Company and product
Name
Legend
Tagline

Brand pyramid

The target audience of the brand
The target audience’s needs (emotional and functional)
CA insight
Brand benefits (emotional and functional)
RTB (reason to believe) or brand attributes
Brand values, brand personality, character, tonality
Brand mission
Positioning and brand essence

Logo

General description
Construction scheme
Basic options
Monochrome logo image
Black and white and inverted logo image
Logo colors
Background for logo
Invalid use cases
Acceptable combinations with other signs
Logo size calculations, scaling, and minimum size
Protective field and proportions
Placement of the logo on layouts

Color

Primary color table
Complementary color table

Typography

Corporate font
Terms of use for an advertising message
Use in the background
Illegal use

Branded graphics

Patterns and use cases
Pictograms
Recommendations for building
Prohibited options
Use in text

Business documentation

Form
Business card
Envelope
Folder
Building a personal signature
Fashion products (notebook, pen, cup, etc.)

Internal navigation & External identification

Door signs, navigation bar, room map, pointers, badge, staff uniform
Scheme of building a sign, working hours, flag, car branding

We use the best practices for structuring and presenting information so that the brand book does not become a dusty book on the CMO’s shelf, but becomes a working tool for every employee of the company. Stylish and laconic layout, text minimization, and maximum visual presentation of the rules — these tasks are solved by the development of a brand book — good and correct.

Brand book development is a team effort

What is required from a client to make a brand book work

We will work together!

Yes, it didn’t seem to you. We will interact with you and your team throughout the project.

Interviews, observations, analytics, excursions, test drives, mystery shoppers, focus groups with clients, and a lot of questions.

It is important for us to understand everything about the company and its structure, about the product and its unique selling proposition, about your strengths and weaknesses both at the product level and at the brand level, about your competitors and how you compete with them, about your audience and how you love her.

No one knows your company, your market, your product, or your customer better than you!

If you have already prepared the answer: “Well, you are professionals, you have to tell me everything,” then let’s say goodbye right here, in this article, and on this line.

Let’s give an analogy for understanding. If your business is a ship, then we do not take the helm, we want to give the ship more tools to sail faster. And if we do not understand the ship, if you say: “Well, that one is at the pier, that is our ship,” we will never make a good accelerator. This is a team effort and we are in the same boat.

Important to know

Is the brand book already a brand?

EVEN THE COOLEST BRANDBOOK WILL NOT MAKE A COMPANY A BRAND!

Yes, it’s true. In reality, the brand book will set the direction; it will tell you what to talk about and how to look. This means that we still need to speak and show.

All this is not an easy, but very exciting process of building a brand, where with the help of integrated communications you convey your positioning to the audience through creative ideas. This is building a relationship between you and the audience, where at the stage of the brand book you decided what you want to be in this relationship.

If your brand has been on the market for a long time, then positioning will be built according to who you already are, what resources you have, and what you are ready to change in the brand and what not.

If you are just entering the market, positioning will be developed taking into account your capabilities, among which the optimal for the market and with the development perspective will be selected.

If it’s simpler, you can leave even the old packaging design, if it is impossible to replace it, or you can allow us to create a completely new concept for selling your product, where packaging may not even be needed.