What your brand guidelines are missing

Just picture it: you’ve invested months crafting those beautiful PDF guidelines following a rebrand. The team celebrates the launch, then just three weeks later, the questions come pouring in like “How should the logo animate on our new website?”. Someone else wants to know what the brand sounds like for a podcast intro. Another needs to generate social content, but can’t actually locate the latest version of the guidelines on your server. Was it version 2.4 we are on now?!

Nobody has the answers because these scenarios weren’t considered when the guidelines were written.

Your brand today lives predominantly in digital spaces where it needs to move, make sound, adapt responsively and increasingly have multiple experts generating content, sales materials and communications for you. The gap between what guidelines typically contain (the rules) and what teams actually need (a coherent brand that has flexibility built in) has never been wider.

The PDF guidelines that die on day one

Let’s start with the most fundamental problem: static guidelines become obsolete the moment you hit save. I’ve seen businesses go up to version 11.7, and a little bit of me always wondered what the difference between version 10.1 and 11 was – a major update perhaps?

The reality is that your brand, from the moment of its inception, continues to evolve. New products launch, teams make decisions that inch your brand forward and there are new requirements for applications that previously weren’t needed. The challenge is that often none of this evolution makes it back into that PDF sitting in someone’s shared drive. And even if it does, Sarah in Sales has the guidelines saved on her desktop and doesn’t realise there was a version 10 update. It can then spiral: different departments work from different versions, regional teams use outdated colour codes, the sales team presents with last year’s templates. That rebrand suddenly looks a lot different in many different scenarios – and that brand consistency is lost.

The key way to think about guidelines is: don’t treat them as a finished document.

This is where a Digital Asset Management (DAM) platform like Frontify and Bynder is invaluable (other brands are available, but these are the two DAM’s we’ve personally used at Nalla). They transform brand guidelines from static documents into living, centralised systems. These tools allow real-time updates, universal access, version control and download of assets so everyone’s always working from the same source – ensuring the latest assets are always available alongside the guidance for using them

When your branding needs to move

Here’s a test: open your brand guidelines and look for animation principles. This might look like instructions for how your logo should transition onto screen or timing parameters for loading states and interactive elements.

Unless you work for one of a handful of forward-thinking large organisations, these elements often don’t exist. Yet your brand appears on websites, in apps, across social platforms and in video content every single day – motion needs to be a fundamental part of your guidelines.

We have to move away from assuming motion design is something your web team can figure out on their own and instead build motion design systems into your guidelines. Define animation curves, establish timing principles and create libraries of approved transitions. Make motion design as codified as your colour palette.

Why global brands sound the same

Close your eyes and imagine these sounds: the Apple Mac startup chime; the Intel bong; the Netflix ‘ta-dum’.

Each is instantly recognisable, indelibly linked to the brand it represents. These companies understand that brand identity isn’t purely visual. Sonic branding has become one of the most powerful tools for creating distinctive brand experiences. Yet when was the last time you saw audio guidelines in a brand book for your global business?

The omission is striking given how much our interaction with brands has shifted towards audio formats. Branded podcasts, voice assistants, video content, virtual events – you name it, every one of these touchpoints is an opportunity for sonic branding to reinforce your business, but most organisations show up inconsistently because they’ve never clarified what they should sound like.

Don’t leave audio touchpoints to chance. Develop a sonic branding approach that goes beyond just a single audio logo – though this is a good place to start. Document music style parameters, voice characteristics for narration and sound effects for interactions. The most sophisticated sonic brands have created audio guidelines that sit alongside their visual guidelines, ensuring every touchpoint sounds intentional.

When brand meets digital product

There’s a peculiar disconnect I see time and time again in many organisations: brand guidelines and digital product design.

Marketing often oversees the rebrand project and creates beautiful guidelines aligned to campaigns and internal engagement activities. Meanwhile, product teams build the actual digital experiences customers interact with most frequently. For many of the businesses we work with at Nalla, this is often deeper than applying the guidelines to a corporate website – it’s a booking system or SAAS tool. These worlds of marketing and digital product design often operate in parallel but in isolation. The result? A brand that looks cohesive in advertising but feels fragmented in practice.

Your website and app aren’t separate from your brand – for most customers, they are your brand. This is where people spend most of their time with you. Yet traditional guidelines rarely account for the needs of digital products. They might specify a colour palette in both RGB and CMYK, but not define the UI component library.

Your guidelines need component libraries – that is comprehensive collections of reusable UI elements that embody your brand principles. These aren’t just buttons and form fields. They’re the building blocks of your digital brand experience, each designed to express your brand personality whilst solving real user needs.

Instead, embed design systems and UI patterns directly into your brand guidelines from the start.

Create component libraries that also live in tools like Figma (where designers actually work) which allows everyone to speak the same language. Even better, document these components so that developers can see exactly how each element should function too. These tools become your brand guardians – they’re the living embodiment of your brand in the digital space where most customer interactions happen.

Building guidelines for tomorrow

Traditional brand guidelines were designed to solve the problems brands faced in a predominantly print world. However, what they’re not doing is addressing the challenges brands face today, which is often how they show up in the digital world. And while we all know that, there are so many businesses that don’t do anything about it.

Not sure where to start?

It should all begin with auditing your current guidelines: how dynamic they are, how they address motion, whether they include sonic elements, how they serve digital product needs and whether they’re prepared for AI-assisted creation. Prioritise based on where your brand lives most.

But here’s what matters most: behind every asset, behind every platform, behind every innovation, there’s one goal. Human connection.

At Nalla, we call it Business to People (B2P) – the recognition that you’re not building guidelines for abstract entities called ‘businesses’ or ‘consumers’. You’re actually building them for people. Real individuals who interact with your brand, form opinions about it and ultimately make decisions based on how it makes them feel.

The brands that will thrive in the next decade are building a framework that recognises brands exist to connect with real-life people.

If you’d like some help with updating your brand guidelines get in contact. We’ve been doing this successfully for 15 years.