Brand guidelines generator

How the number is worked out

The positioning line is your own words rearranged, with nothing claimed on your behalf. The palette is derived from your one colour in HSL: tints and shades stepped from it, and neutrals that keep a little of its hue so they do not read as dirty grey beside it. Every swatch is measured against white and against black using the WCAG contrast formula and labelled with what may safely sit on it. The type scale steps by roughly a quarter at each size.

Benchmarks worth comparing against

What comes out, and what it is derived from

Seven things. A positioning line assembled from what you typed, with nothing claimed on your behalf. A palette derived from your one colour in HSL, with tints, shades and neutrals that keep a little of its hue. A contrast rating on every swatch. A type scale. Open-source typeface suggestions with fallback stacks. Voice rules from your tone answer. And rules for using your mark, if and when you have one.

Nothing here is invented. Every part is either your own words rearranged or a calculation you can check yourself, which is a deliberately narrow promise and the reason the output is usable rather than decorative.

A worked example

Say you enter a mid-blue at hex #2563EB. The builder measures it at 5.17:1 against white, so white body text on that blue clears the WCAG 2.2 Level AA minimum of 4.5:1. Against black it measures 4.06:1, which passes the 3:1 bar for large text but fails the 4.5:1 bar for body copy. So the label reads: white text yes, black text only at 18pt or 14pt bold.

The tints and shades come off the same hue with the lightness stepped. A light tint of that blue, around #DBE6FD, measures 1.25:1 against white and 16.75:1 against black, so it is useless behind white text and excellent behind near-black text. That is the practical output of the contrast pass: not a pass or fail badge on the brand, but a per-colour instruction about what may sit on each one.

The type scale steps by roughly a quarter at each size, which is what stops a page having six headings that all look the same. And the voice section turns an abstraction into rules, so “plain and direct” becomes short sentences, no decoration, and the verb before the qualification.

What this does not do

• It does not draw a logo. Deliberately, and for the reason in the FAQ below.
• It has not seen your competitors. A palette that is defensible in isolation can still be the same blue as the two firms you are trying to be distinguished from. Check that yourself, in a browser, before you commit.
• It checks contrast, not taste. The tool can tell you text will be readable on a colour. It cannot tell you the combination is right for what you sell.
• It is a floor. Everything it produces is consistent and defensible, which is more than most small businesses start with, and less than a designer will do with a week and a conversation.

The guideline is built in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere, nothing is stored, and there is no email field, so copy or print it before you close the tab.

Where consistency actually breaks in a B2B firm

Not on packaging. On proposals, slide decks and LinkedIn. Those are made under time pressure by whoever is free, which is precisely when a guideline earns its keep, and precisely when nobody reads a forty-page PDF. Keep the working version to one page: two typefaces, four colours with their contrast labels, one line on tone, and where the logo files live. Put the long version behind it for anyone who needs it.

Governance is the other half, and it is one sentence long. One file, one owner, one date on it. Three slightly different versions in three inboxes is how a brand quietly stops being one.

When to stop generating and talk to someone

Stop when you need a mark. That is the point this tool is built to hand off rather than fake, and it is the first thing our branding and creative design service does, starting at $220 for Identity Basics over two to three weeks. Stop, too, when the guideline has to cover things a generator cannot see: photography, iconography, or how the brand behaves in a product interface.

If you want the thinking behind the questions the builder asks, how to create a brand identity is the longer version. If the brand is about to meet a website, the project planner puts identity and build in the right order and attaches the published budgets, and the offers and pricing page lists what each brand package includes.

Our case studies show what the finished version of this work looks like. Bring the generated guideline to a free consultation: it is a far better brief than a blank page.