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Fill in this workbook as you go. Each section has a “Concept review” dropdown underneath it. These explain the concept behind the section, not a rule to follow. Your brand might land somewhere different than the examples show, and that’s fine. Examples throughout use Doughnut Labs, a SaaS company that sells disruptive Doughnut Technology. Delete the grayed example text as you fill each section in.
These are the rules. The files themselves are listed in brand assets, and everything visual that isn’t the logo is in visual identity.
1

Name every variant that exists

An undocumented variant gets recreated badly by whoever needs it. If a mono version exists, list it.
2

Tie each rule to a measurement

“Leave enough space” is not a rule. “Clear space equals the height of the D” is.
3

Show the misuses

A list of don’ts prevents more errors than a list of dos, because it names the specific mistakes people actually make.
4

Decide who's allowed to use it

Section 6 covers people outside the company. Skip it only if nobody outside ever uses the logo.

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Core sections

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1. Logo variants

A variant set exists because a single lockup cannot survive every context it will be dropped into. A horizontal logo in a square avatar either shrinks past legibility or gets cropped, and someone will do one of those two things if no third option is provided.The “never use it” column keeps the set from collapsing. Once several variants exist, the most convenient one starts getting used everywhere, and the symbol in particular tends to migrate into places where the audience has no idea what it stands for yet. Recognition of a symbol alone is earned over years of exposure, which is why brands at different ages can make opposite calls here and both be right.

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2. Clear space and minimum size

Clear space E.g. Clear space on all four sides equals the height of the capital D in the wordmark. Nothing enters that zone: no text, no other logos, no photographic subject, no page edge. Minimum sizes
Clear space defined as a proportion of the logo covers a business card and a billboard with the same rule. Tie it to a pixel value and the rule breaks at every other size; tie it to a letterform and it scales by itself.Minimum size is a legibility floor, and the floor is set by production method. Ink spreads on uncoated paper, embroidery cannot hold fine detail, and a screen at one device pixel ratio renders a thin stroke differently than another. That’s why a single minimum across all contexts is usually either too conservative for screens or too small for anything physical.Both rules are the ones most often broken by people acting reasonably. Someone fitting a logo into a tight slide layout is solving the problem in front of them, and the guideline tells them the right answer is a smaller variant.

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3. Backgrounds

Photography is where logo placement usually goes wrong, and the reason is that a photograph is not one background. It’s hundreds of local ones, and a mark that sits cleanly over the sky in a crop loses its edge entirely when the crop moves.There are two broad ways to handle it. One is to require enough contrast wherever the logo lands, which keeps the image clean and makes placement a judgment call each time. The other is to introduce something between the mark and the image, a scrim, a panel, a solid band, which is more reliable and less elegant.Most brands use both depending on how controlled the imagery is. A brand that shoots its own photography can rely on placement; one whose logo appears over partner or user-supplied images generally cannot.

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4. Misuse

Never do any of the following to the logo:
  • Stretch, squash, or otherwise change its proportions.
  • Rotate it, including “slight” angles.
  • Recolor it outside the approved variants.
  • Add effects: drop shadows, outlines, glows, bevels, gradients.
  • Rebuild the wordmark by typing the brand name in the brand typeface.
  • Place it on a background that breaks the contrast rule in section 3.
  • Crop it, or let another element overlap it.
  • Change the spacing or arrangement inside a lockup.
  • Use it as a bullet, a texture, or a repeating pattern.
  • Use an old version pulled from a search result or a screenshot.
  • [add misuse]
A don’t list works because it’s concrete in a way that positive guidance rarely is. “Use the logo correctly” can be read as permission for whatever the reader was about to do. “Do not add a drop shadow” cannot.The items on most lists are not exotic. They’re the things a well-meaning person does when the logo doesn’t quite fit or doesn’t quite pop: a slight stretch to fill a space, an outline to lift it off a photograph, a retype because the file wasn’t at hand. Naming those specific moves is what makes the list useful, since a reader recognizes their own impulse in it.Retyping the wordmark deserves particular attention because it usually looks acceptable. Wordmarks are typically customized after being set: kerning adjusted, a letterform modified, an ascender shortened. A retyped version is close enough that nobody catches it, and it quietly enters circulation as a second logo.

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5. Lockups and co-branding

Fixed lockups E.g. Two exist: logo plus tagline, and logo plus sub-brand name. Both are supplied as single files. Neither is ever rebuilt by hand, and the spacing inside them is never adjusted. Co-branding rules
Measuring relative size by bounding box is the usual source of trouble. Two logos scaled to the same box height can look very unequal if one is a compact wordmark and the other has a tall symbol and descenders. Optical weight, judged on cap height or on the mass of the mark, is what people actually perceive as equal billing.That perception is the reason the rules exist at all. Co-branding communicates a relationship, and relative size and order are read as status whether or not anyone intended them to be. A partner whose mark is rendered visibly smaller has been told something about the partnership.Requiring approval per lockup is a workload decision, not a design one. It catches the cases a written rule can’t anticipate, and it costs a review cycle every time. Brands that co-brand constantly usually replace it with a template; brands that do it occasionally usually don’t need to.

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Optional sections

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A. Icons, favicons, and social avatars

Optional: include if the brand appears as an app icon, favicon, or profile picture
These placements are unusual in that the platform, not the brand, controls the frame. A square upload gets cropped to a circle, a corner radius gets applied that nobody chose, and a mark designed for a rectangle arrives somewhere it was never tested.Detail loss at small sizes is the related problem. A symbol that reads well at 200px can turn into a smudge at 16px, where an inner cutout closes up and a fine stroke disappears. Some brands solve this with a simplified small-size variant, which costs another file to maintain and guarantees the mark stays legible.

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B. Third-party and partner use

Optional: include if customers, partners, press, or integrations use the logo
Who may use the logo, for what, and how do they get it? E.g. Customers may use the Doughnut Labs logo to say they use Doughnut Labs. Partners in the directory may use it in their own listing. Press may use it in coverage. Nobody may use it in a way that implies endorsement, in a product name, or as part of their own logo. Files are downloaded from the public press kit, and any other use is requested in writing.
Once a logo is outside the organization, control shifts from process to permission. Nobody reviews a partner’s slide deck, so whatever they were told in writing is the only thing shaping what they produce.The line most brands care about is between reference and endorsement. Stating that a relationship exists is ordinarily fine. Arranging the mark so a reader concludes the brand has vouched for something is a different claim, and it’s the one that causes problems, usually without anyone intending it.Making the files easy to get is part of the same mechanism. A partner who can’t find an approved file will use one from a search result, and the version they find is often several years old.
Last modified on August 12, 2026