Why you have Brand Guidelines, but no consistency

A practical guide to building brand systems that work in the real world

Many organisations invest time and resources into creating brand guidelines. These documents are meant to ensure consistency, clarity, and cohesion across every brand touchpoint. But more often than not, the reality looks very different. Despite having guidelines in place, teams still produce inconsistent outputs, internal tools feel disconnected, and external agencies are left guessing.

The issue isn’t always the quality of the design — it’s the gap between theory and implementation.

Below are the most common reasons brand guidelines fail to deliver consistency, along with practical suggestions for how to address them.

Let’s break down why your current brand guidelines might be failing you, and more importantly, how to fix them.

1. Real production needs are overlooked

Many guidelines remain too theoretical or aesthetic. They don’t include clear instructions for file formats, technical specifications, localisation needs, or usage at different scales.

Without this level of detail, consistency breaks down across channels such as web, social, print, and email.

What helps: Provide format guidance, define output specs, and test your assets in actual production environments.

2. Lack of extensibility in colour systems

Often only the core colour palette is defined, without direction on how it can be extended. Teams are left unsure how to apply colours across different backgrounds, use tone-on-tone combinations, or ensure accessibility contrast.

There’s also little guidance on how to evolve the palette for sub-brands, campaigns, or internal systems.

What helps: Include rules for extended usage, accessibility considerations, and examples of how colours adapt across content types.

3. No dynamic or interactive examples

Guidelines frequently overlook motion and real-time applications. Presentation templates, onboarding tools, and animated logo treatments are missing, even though these are essential brand expressions.

As a result, storytelling opportunities are missed and brand energy gets lost in static execution.

What helps: Include examples of how the brand behaves in motion, interactive environments, and presentation scenarios.

4. Incomplete typography guidance

Listing font names and weights is not enough. Without hierarchy rules, responsive behaviour, multilingual usage, and grid integration examples, teams will make inconsistent decisions.

What helps: Provide a full typographic system with scale, hierarchy, spacing, and usage across different devices and languages.

5. Not designed with third parties in mind

External partners and agencies often don’t receive the assets or clarity they need to apply the brand correctly. Starter templates, usage boundaries, and editable libraries are missing.

What helps: Include Figma or PowerPoint libraries, usage examples, and clear guidance on what can be adapted and what should remain fixed.

6. Tone of voice lacks application

Even when a tone of voice is defined, it’s rarely shown in practice. There’s no link between visual and verbal identity, no examples of copy working alongside design, headlines in context, or how CTAs should sound across channels.

What helps: Integrate tone of voice into design examples and show how it plays out across banners, presentations, emails, and campaigns.

7. Only considers one type of user

Many guidelines are written primarily for designers. They don’t take into account the needs of marketers, developers, sales teams, or internal trainers, all of whom interact with the brand in different ways.

What helps: Address different user needs with tailored sections. Provide practical tools, shortcuts, and explainer content for non-designers.

8. No testing or piloting before launch

Guidelines are often released without being trialled. There’s no testing phase to see how they perform in day-to-day applications or how easily they can be followed by different teams.

What helps: Run a pilot with actual users. Gather feedback. Adjust the guidelines based on how they’re used, not just how they were intended.

9. No support for non-designer users

Key stakeholders like HR, sales, and operations teams are often left without guidance. If they don’t have design support, they either produce off-brand content or avoid using branded materials altogether.

What helps: Offer simplified templates, usage walkthroughs, and editable assets for business teams and external contributors.

10. Weak or missing photography direction

Visual inconsistency often starts with imagery. Without a clear photography guide that covers style, tone, subject matter, diversity, and sourcing, teams default to generic or mismatched visuals.

What helps: Create a robust photography section. Include dos and don’ts, mood guidance, and accessibility considerations, especially if your brand champions inclusion or realness.

11. No guidance for localisation or regional use

Many brands operate across multiple markets, but the guidelines don’t reflect that. There’s no strategy for adapting tone, imagery, or layout based on cultural context or language requirements.

What helps: Provide localisation rules and examples. Clarify what elements can flex by region and which ones must stay consistent.

12. No explanation of the "why"

Guidelines often focus on what to do, but not why it matters. Without this understanding, teams are more likely to bend the rules or disregard them entirely, not out of laziness, but out of confusion.

What helps: Include a narrative that explains the intent behind the system. Help people connect with the purpose and values driving the brand.

13. Lack of real-world examples

A polished logo on a white page doesn’t show how a brand works in practice. What’s missing is context, live examples of how the brand comes to life in real environments like launches, social posts, events, and internal decks.

What helps: Add use-case driven examples that show the brand in action. Include both big brand moments and everyday executions.

In conclusion

Strong brand guidelines do more than document decisions. They enable consistency, inspire creativity, and make it easy for people to do the right thing.

If you want your brand to be consistent, don’t just create a PDF. Build a toolkit. Test it. Train people. Support them in using it well.

Consistency is not just about rules. It’s about clarity, context, and confidence.