Branding Guidelines That Outside Designers Can Use

You have a logo file, a freelance designer, and a Friday deadline. What you don’t have is a set of branding guidelines, which leaves an outside designer guessing. Most guides are written for people who already know the brand, so they stall the moment an outsider opens one. A short test will show you where yours stalls, and a few decisions will keep it from stalling again.

What Is the Stranger Test for Branding Guidelines?

Our stranger test checks whether someone who has never met you can produce on-brand work using only your guide. It’s our own method rather than an industry standard.

Give the guide to someone who has never worked with your company and ask them for a flyer. Write down every question they ask without answering it. Each question marks a spot where the guide has gone silent.

Take a hypothetical designer named Dana, a talented freelancer who has never heard of your company. On Monday she opens your files to build a flyer for your spring open house. She needs a logo, colors, fonts, a tone of voice, and a photo or two.

What Job Does Each Section of a Guide Do?

Each section exists to answer a question Dana would otherwise send you. A section can look polished and still fail at that job.

Color is the one row with a measurable standard. Under the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2, normal text needs a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 against its background. Large text (18 point or bigger, or 14 point bold) needs 3 to 1. Text that’s part of a logo is exempt. If your guide lists exact color values and marks which pairings meet those ratios, Dana can skip the trial and error.

Now run the flyer through the table. If your guide fails the logo row, Dana will guess at spacing. If it fails the voice row, her headline will be generic. Two or three failures in a row mean the guide records past decisions without instructing the next person.

What Should You Hand a Designer by Friday?

A first brief that answers the questions in the table will get you a usable flyer without requiring a finished guide. Send Dana these seven items:

• Logo files in the formats she’ll need, with a note on minimum size and clear space
• Color values for every color you use, plus the two or three that appear together most often
• Font names with download links and a fallback for programs that don’t have them
• A voice paragraph with three sample sentences that sound like you
• Five to ten approved photos, plus one or two that didn’t make the cut
• One past piece you consider on brand, so she can see the parts working together
• One name for the person who answers her questions and approves the flyer

With those in hand, Dana can build the flyer without stopping to ask you questions. You also end up with a first draft of your guide. Answering a real request forces you to write down the hard parts. If you’re working to build a brand on a budget, this list is a low-cost way to start on the visual system once your message is settled.

Friday gets you a working first brief, and Dana’s questions along the way become the to-do list for the rest of the guide.

Which Three Decisions Keep a Guide From Drifting?

A guide written once and filed away starts to drift by the second project. Three decisions slow the drift, and each one costs less to make now than later.

Who approves new work

Choose one person to approve finished work and put that name in the guide. If three people can sign off, Dana receives three rounds of conflicting feedback. A single approver also gives you one place to record changes when the brand shifts, which keeps the guide current.

Where the files live

Pick one shared folder for current versions only, and link to it at the top of the guide. Scattered files send every new designer back to an outdated logo.

Ownership of those files matters as much as their location. This is general information rather than legal advice. Under US copyright law, the person who creates a work is its author and starts out as its owner, and a transfer of ownership requires a signed writing. The Copyright Office’s circular on works made for hire adds a condition. Commissioned work counts as made for hire only when both sides sign an agreement that says so and the work fits one of nine statutory categories. For a freelance file, that means the designer generally owns the copyright unless a signed writing says otherwise. Put ownership terms in writing before work starts. Raise it with Dana before the flyer begins, and consider having an attorney review your agreement.

What a designer does when the guide is silent

Every guide has gaps, so give Dana a rule for the day she hits one. She picks the closest documented choice, notes what she chose and why, and sends the note to your approver, who confirms or corrects it. The guide then gains one new line.

That habit is what carries a guide from one vendor to the next. A new designer inherits your files and logins, but the reasoning behind past decisions stays with whoever made them. A running log of gaps and answers keeps that reasoning in writing.

What to Do Before Your Friday Brief

Before the brief goes out, run the stranger test on your own materials. A colleague from another department and a request for a flyer will do. Fix the rows that fail, write down who approves, name the folder, and give Dana a rule for the gaps. That’s a short week of work, and every handoff after it gets easier.

If you want a second set of eyes before you send it, you can talk through your guide with our team. We’ll tell you which sections can wait and which ones a designer needs first.