What a brand identity should include

One logo file is never enough, because a logo has to work in places of very different shapes and sizes. A complete set has four forms.

• The primary logo.
• Horizontal and stacked arrangements, for wide and narrow spaces.
• Single-colour versions in black and in white, for photographs and dark backgrounds.
• An icon, for the browser tab and for social profile pictures.

The icon is the hardest test. A mark that becomes unreadable at the size of a browser tab icon needs a simpler form for small uses.

A palette is a short list of exact values: hex or RGB for screens, and CMYK for print. Each colour should have a stated job, such as background, text, buttons or highlights.

Contrast is the check most palettes skip. Text and its background need a contrast ratio of at least 4.5 to 1 to meet level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, and large text needs 3 to 1. A brand colour that fails as text can still be used for backgrounds and graphics.

One or two typefaces are enough: often one for headings and one for body text. The identity should name each typeface and its weights, confirm that the licence covers websites as well as print, and name the fallback fonts used when the main one cannot load.

Guidelines are the rules that keep the identity consistent when many hands use it. A useful document is short. It shows the clear space around the logo, the smallest size the logo may appear at, which colours go together, and a page of things not to do.

Templates are where an identity is actually used day to day, so a complete one arrives with the common ones built.

• Social profile pictures and header images, sized for each platform.
• The social card, which is the image shown when a link to your site is shared.
• Document, presentation and email signature templates.
• The favicon set for the website.

Ask for the vector masters of every logo form, PNG exports of each, the colour values, the typeface names and licences, the guidelines document and editable versions of every template. Whoever holds those files controls the brand, and it should be you.

Each of these checks takes a few minutes.

1. Put your logo beside three competitors’ logos at small size. Yours should be told apart at a glance.
2. Compare your website, social profiles, invoices and signage. The logo, colours and typeface should match on all of them.
3. Test your main colour as text on its usual background with a free contrast checker.
4. Send a link to your home page in a message. A proper image and title should appear with it.
5. Find the vector file of your logo. If nobody can, that is the first thing to put right.