What should a design manual include?
A design manual should include the rules that make your brand recognisable, and examples that show the rules in use. Seven parts recur in most of them:
- Logo: variants, minimum size, clear space (the space around the logo) and the backgrounds it may appear on.
- Colours: primary and secondary colours with codes for screen (HEX and RGB) and print (CMYK and possibly Pantone), and where each colour belongs.
- Typography: typefaces for headings and body text, sizes, and what you use when your own font isn't available, e.g. in an e-mail.
- Image style: what your images show, the lighting, the cropping, and what you never use.
- Tone of voice: how you sound, written as rules with examples.
- Examples: real materials such as an ad, a post, a presentation and a sign.
- Do's and don'ts: the most common mistakes, shown side by side with the right solution.
Many add layout, icons, illustrations, video and sound. Include what you actually use. A long manual that no one opens does less than a short one that everyone uses.
Logo and colours
The logo is what people recognise first. It's also what most often gets stretched, recoloured or placed on the wrong background. Show the mistakes with images: the logo stretched, the logo on a busy background, the logo too small. One illustration of each mistake saves a lot of e-mails.
Write the colours as codes. "Our green" can end up as many different shades. A colour code can only be one. Also write down how the colours are distributed. Perhaps the primary colour takes up the most space, and the accent colour only appears on buttons and key figures.
Check the contrast. WCAG, the international guidelines for web accessibility, sets the limit at a contrast of at least 4.5:1 between normal text and background at level AA. Large text of at least 18 point, or 14 point in bold, can make do with 3:1 according to WCAG. If you sell to consumers online, e-commerce is also covered by the Danish accessibility requirements. They apply from 28 June 2025, and microenterprises may be exempt. A colour that looks great on a moodboard can be unreadable as text on a button.
Typography and image style
Fonts often require a licence, and the licence may have limits on web, apps or number of users. Write in the design manual where the licence is kept and which system font you use when your own isn't installed.
Image style is the part most often described as a mood: authentic, warm and present. A photographer can't use that, and an AI tool even less so. Instead, describe what's in the picture. "Real employees in our own premises, daylight, no handshakes in front of a screen" is something both a photographer and an image tool can work with.
Tone of voice
Tone of voice is the part of the design manual you'll use most. You write far more than you design. Write it as rules you can check, e.g. sentence length, words you use and words you never use. Add before-and-after examples to each rule. Read more about writing a tone of voice that works in everyday use.
What's the difference between a design manual and a brand book?
A design manual describes how the brand should look and sound. A brand book explains why: what the brand stands for, who it's for and what you promise. You make that choice in your brand strategy. The design manual is the working tool, and the brand book is the story behind it.
Brand guidelines is the English term, and it typically covers both. Many companies gather everything in one document, and that's fine. Just make sure the rules are easy to find and that they build on what the brand stands for. The design manual is the practical part of your brand identity. It turns the identity into colours, words and images that people can use on Monday morning.
Why does a design manual need to work for AI?
A design manual needs to work for AI because your people now create copy, images and presentations with AI tools. According to Danmarks Statistik, 44 per cent of private companies with at least ten employees use artificial intelligence to produce written text or spoken language in 2026. And 32 per cent use it to generate images, video or sound. Without your rules, the tools write the internet's average. It sounds correct and could come from anyone in your industry.
A person can look through your old campaigns and get a feel for the style. A machine needs the rules in writing. Three things make the difference:
Written rules. "Headings in bold, never in capitals" is something a machine can follow. A page with a beautiful layout is something it can only guess from.
Examples. Good and bad copy side by side shows the tool what the rules mean in practice. It learns more from that than from a list of adjectives.
Banned words. A short list of words and phrases you never use. It's easy to give to a tool and easy to check afterwards.
So make a text version of the design manual alongside the polished PDF. In my view, it's now just as important as the PDF. It's one file with the rules written as sentences. It contains the colour codes, the names of the fonts, the image style in words, the tone of voice and the list of banned words.
Put the file into the tools you use. In ChatGPT and Claude, it can sit in a project with fixed instructions. In Canva, the logo, colours and fonts can sit in a brand kit. That way, the rules come with every task, and no one has to remember to add them.
Test it afterwards. Give an AI tool only the text version and ask for an ad and a LinkedIn post. If the result looks like you, the manual works. If it looks like everyone else, rules are missing.
How Amplify works with design manuals
At Amplify, we write the design manual so both people and machines can work with it. We do it ourselves too. We've written Amplify's own tone of voice as instructions for AI. It has rules, before-and-after examples and a list of words we never use. It sits in our own AI agent, and when we correct it in one place, the correction applies to everything the agent writes afterwards.
Here's what the process looks like for you:
- Collection. We gather what exists: logo files, old manuals, fonts, your best ads and the materials people actually use.
- Rules in writing. Colours with codes, fonts with licences, logo rules, image style in words and tone of voice with do's and don'ts.
- Examples. Real materials in your brand, before and after, and the mistakes we see most often.
- The text version. One file for AI tools with rules, examples and banned words. Your colours, fonts, tone and banned words are also stored in the agent. If colours or fonts are missing, it says so instead of guessing.
- Templates. Ads, posts and presentations, so your team can work within the brand without starting from scratch.
- Checks and maintenance. We check new materials against the manual. During a review of new ads, the agent found a spelling mistake inside a video. We paused the ad and corrected the material before it ran again. The manual gets an owner and a date, and we update it when the brand changes.
A design manual only creates recognition when the brand knows what it stands for. If you're unsure about that, start with the brand and do the manual afterwards.
Frequently asked questions about design manuals
How long should a design manual be?
Short enough that people use it. Start with logo, colours, typography, image style and tone of voice on a few pages, and expand with whatever you find is missing. The text version for AI can often fit on a couple of pages.
Who should own the design manual?
One named person, typically in marketing. The owner answers questions, approves exceptions and updates the manual when something changes. Without an owner, the manual becomes outdated, and people stop using it.
Should the logo be registered as a trademark?
It's voluntary, and registration gives you the exclusive right to the name and logo for the classes of goods and services you apply for. You register with Patent- og Varemærkestyrelsen, and the registration must be renewed every ten years. Ask an adviser if you're unsure what to apply for.
Can AI create a design manual?
AI can do much of the work: write the rules based on your existing materials, suggest do's and don'ts and create the text version. It can't choose how your brand should look. That choice belongs to management and a designer who knows the brand.
Your next step
Gather the last five things you've sent out: an ad, a post, a presentation, a newsletter and a page on your website. Put them side by side. Do they look like one brand? Write down where they differ. That list is the table of contents for your next design manual. If it's hard to use in practice, we're happy to look at it with you.