Brand guidelines are refreshed by auditing what already exists, identifying where the brand has drifted in practice, agreeing what changes and what stays, and then rolling the update out in a way teams actually adopt. The documentation is the easy part. Getting the new version into use — and the old version out of circulation — is where most refreshes fail.
Most organisations reach this point for one of three reasons: the guidelines have aged past the brand they describe, a rebrand or acquisition has changed the identity, or teams have quietly stopped following them because they are hard to find and harder to apply. These ten steps cover the process end to end.
Step 1: Audit what you already have — and what people actually use
Start by establishing two separate things: what your guidelines currently say, and what teams are genuinely working from. They are rarely the same document.
Gather every version in circulation — the official PDF, the deck someone made for onboarding, the one-page summary the agency was sent, the intranet page nobody has updated. Ask three or four people across different teams what they refer to when they need a logo or a colour value. The answers usually reveal that the authoritative document is not the one being used.
This audit tells you what you are actually replacing. Refreshing a document nobody opens will not change anything.
Step 2: Identify where the brand has drifted
Collect a representative sample of live material — recent campaigns, regional work, agency output, sales collateral, social assets, internal decks — and compare it against the current guidelines.
You are looking for patterns rather than individual errors. If four different teams have all made the same off-guideline choice, that is not four mistakes; it is a gap in the guidelines. Common examples: a logo variant people need that was never supplied, a colour that fails accessibility contrast so designers substitute their own, a format the guidelines never anticipated.
Record what you find. This becomes the evidence base for what the refresh needs to fix, and it makes the case for the work considerably easier to argue internally.
Step 3: Confirm what is changing and what is not
Define the scope explicitly before any design work begins, because refresh projects expand quietly. There is a meaningful difference between correcting and extending an existing identity, and redesigning it.
Agree in writing which elements are fixed — usually the logo, the primary palette and the core typography — and which are open for change. If the logo is not changing, say so at the outset. It prevents months of speculative work and stakeholder anxiety.
Scope also determines cost downstream. Changing a colour value means updating a document. Changing a logo means reissuing every asset, template, signage item and third-party listing that carries it.
Step 4: Gather input from the people who apply the brand
The most useful input on a guidelines refresh comes from the people who use them daily, not the people who commissioned them. Regional marketers, agency designers, sales teams building their own decks and new starters trying to find a logo will each tell you something different about where the current version fails.
Ask specific questions rather than inviting general feedback: What do you look for most often? What can you never find? What do you end up making yourself? Where do you have to guess?
Consult senior stakeholders on direction, but weight the practical detail toward the people applying it. A guidelines document approved by the executive and ignored by the teams has failed.
Step 5: Update the visual identity specifications
Work through each visual element and make the specification complete rather than merely correct:
- Logo — every approved variant (primary, secondary, monochrome, reversed, stacked, sub-brand), each with clear space and minimum size rules, plus explicit examples of incorrect use
- Colour — HEX, RGB, CMYK and Pantone values for every palette colour, with guidance on proportion and accessibility contrast pairings
- Typography — approved typefaces, the hierarchy, weights and sizes, web fallbacks, and where each is used
- Imagery — photographic direction, subject treatment, colour grading, and what to avoid
- Iconography and illustration — style, construction rules and permitted applications
Show what not to do alongside what to do. Constraints are what guidelines exist to communicate, and a wrong example is understood faster than a written rule.
Step 6: Update messaging, tone of voice and naming
Verbal identity is consistently the weakest section of most guidelines, and consistently the most breached. It is also the part that ages fastest, because product names and positioning change more often than logos do.
The refresh should cover tone of voice described with enough specificity to be actionable — not simply "friendly but professional", which every organisation claims — along with approved terminology, product and entity naming conventions, words and phrases to avoid, and worked examples showing the same message written well and badly.
Product naming deserves particular attention. If names have changed, deprecated terms will persist in circulation for years unless the guidelines state explicitly what replaced what.
Step 7: Add the application guidance that was missing
Step 2 will have surfaced gaps — situations teams face regularly that the guidelines never addressed. This is where you close them.
Most brand documents describe the identity thoroughly and say little about applying it. They specify the palette but not which colour to use for a webinar holding slide; they define the logo but not what to do when it sits on a partner's co-branded template. People fill those gaps with precedent, and precedent is whatever they saw last.
Application guidance is the highest-value addition in most refreshes, and the most frequently omitted.
Step 8: Document the decisions and version the change
Record what changed, why, and who approved it. A guidelines refresh without a change record leaves the next person unable to tell whether a difference between two versions was a deliberate decision or an error.
Version the document properly — a version number, a date and a summary of changes. When someone asks in eighteen months whether a particular asset was built against current guidelines, the answer should be retrievable rather than reconstructed.
This matters most for elements with legal weight: trademark symbols, required disclaimers, third-party mark usage terms. For how those obligations work in practice, see brand compliance.
Step 9: Roll the update out — and withdraw the old version
This is the step that determines whether the refresh works, and the one most often treated as an afterthought.
Announcing new guidelines does not retire the old ones. The previous PDF remains on local drives, in agency archives and inside decks that get duplicated indefinitely. Unless the old version is actively removed from circulation, both versions run in parallel and the refresh has made consistency worse rather than better.
An effective rollout covers four things:
- Tell people what changed and why. A summary of changes is adopted faster than a replacement document with no explanation
- Replace at the source. Update the assets in the location teams draw from, so anyone reaching for a file receives the current version
- Reach external partners deliberately. Agencies, resellers, franchisees and vendors are usually the last to be told and the most likely to keep using superseded material
- Update what already carries the brand. Templates, signage, email signatures, directory listings and social profiles all need scheduling, not just noting
For the wider question of holding consistency across teams and markets after a rollout, see how to keep your brand consistent across teams and markets.
Step 10: Make the guidelines findable — and keep them current
Brand guidelines are only followed if they can be found in less time than guessing takes. A refreshed document saved to a shared drive folder will be as unused as the version it replaced, and will begin ageing from the day it is published.
Three things keep guidelines in use:
A single known location. One place everyone — internal teams, agencies, partners — knows to go. Not a folder path circulated by email.
Guidelines stored with the assets they govern. The clear-space rule beside the logo file, the palette values beside the colour swatches. Rules kept separately from the files they describe are rules nobody reads at the moment they matter.
A way to update without redistributing. Guidelines change continually in small ways — a new sub-brand, a revised disclaimer, an added logo variant. If every change requires reissuing a document, it will not happen, and the guidelines will drift out of date again.
Simple Brand Manager is built for this stage: a live brand hub holding logos, colour values, typography, iconography and guidelines together, with permission-based access for teams, agencies and partners, version history recording every change, and structured approval before anything new enters circulation. Updates take effect immediately for every user, so the current version is the only version available.
For the wider category, see brand management software, or what is Simple Brand Manager for a full walkthrough.
See Simple Brand Manager in action
Book an interactive product tour and see how a live brand hub keeps refreshed guidelines findable, current and actually used.
Frequently asked questions
How often should brand guidelines be updated?
Most organisations review brand guidelines annually and refresh them substantially every two to three years, though the trigger matters more than the interval. A refresh is due whenever the guidelines no longer describe the brand in practice — after a rebrand, acquisition or repositioning, when product or entity naming has changed, when new channels and formats have appeared that the document never anticipated, or when an audit of live material shows teams consistently working around the rules. Guidelines held in a live platform can be updated continuously in small increments, which avoids the pattern of a document ageing quietly for years before requiring a large project to correct.
What should brand guidelines include?
Complete brand guidelines cover both identity and application. Identity includes logo variants with clear space and minimum sizing, colour values in HEX, RGB, CMYK and Pantone, typography with hierarchy and web fallbacks, iconography and illustration style, and photographic direction. Verbal identity covers tone of voice described specifically enough to act on, approved terminology, product and entity naming conventions, and words to avoid. The section most often missing is application guidance — what to do in the situations teams actually face, such as co-branded templates, partner materials or formats the identity was never designed for. Incorrect examples should sit alongside correct ones, since a wrong example is understood faster than a written rule.
Who should be involved in refreshing brand guidelines?
A guidelines refresh needs input from three groups. Senior stakeholders set direction and confirm scope, particularly what is fixed and what may change. Designers and brand specialists do the specification work. The third group is the most frequently skipped and the most useful: the people who apply the brand daily, including regional marketers, agency designers, sales teams building their own materials and recent starters. They identify where the current guidelines fail in practice, which is information nobody else has. Legal or compliance review is also required where guidelines cover trademark symbols, disclaimers or third-party mark usage.
How do you roll out updated brand guidelines to teams?
An effective rollout does four things. It explains what changed and why, because a summary of changes is adopted faster than a replacement document issued without explanation. It replaces assets at the source, so anyone reaching for a file receives the current version rather than a superseded one still sitting in a folder. It reaches external partners deliberately — agencies, resellers, franchisees and vendors are usually told last and are most likely to continue using old material. And it schedules updates to everything already carrying the brand: templates, signage, email signatures, directory listings and social profiles. Announcing new guidelines without withdrawing the previous version leaves both in parallel use.
How do you make brand guidelines easy for teams to find?
Brand guidelines become findable when they live in one known location that every internal team, agency and partner can reach directly, rather than in a folder path circulated by email or a document attached to an onboarding pack. Storing guidelines alongside the assets they govern matters as much as the location itself — the clear-space rule beside the logo file, the palette values beside the colour swatches — because rules kept separately from the files they describe are not read at the moment they are needed. The practical test is whether someone outside the brand team can find the correct rule and the correct file in under a minute without asking anyone.
