Logo usage
guidelines & standards
in Munich

A brandbook written for German copy has to answer questions that an English template never asks. German builds long compound nouns. It has a letter other alphabets lack. It sets quotation marks its own way, and it is in the middle of a debate about gendered forms. If the brandbook stays silent, every writer makes a different call.

Compound words come first. German glues nouns together into single words that can run to thirty letters or more. In a narrow column, a button or a mobile headline, such a word overflows or breaks in an ugly place. The brandbook should state how layouts handle this. Allow automatic hyphenation in body text, with the language set to German. Headlines get manual breaks at a natural joint. In web and app copy, developers place soft hyphens in words that land in tight spaces. A list of frequent long brand terms with preferred break points ends the arguments.

Some teams allow a hyphenated compound for readability. Write that down, with examples. Otherwise pages drift between forms.

The sharp s needs its own paragraph. Lowercase ß is standard in German spelling. A capital version exists and has been part of official German orthography since 2017, but many typefaces still lack the glyph. The brandbook should say whether headlines set in capitals use the capital sharp s or the traditional double S. Check every brand font for the glyph. If the brand also writes for Swiss readers, note that Swiss German spelling does not use the sharp s at all.

Quotation marks follow a different convention in German. The standard form opens with a low double mark at the baseline and closes with a raised mark that curves the other way. Book typography often uses double angle marks instead, pointing inwards toward the quoted words. Both are correct. Pick one style, name the characters exactly and show a sample. English style marks inside German text look careless.

Gender-inclusive language is the most sensitive decision. Options include the gender star, the colon, the capital I inside a word, paired forms that name both genders, and neutral wording that avoids the question altogether. The official spelling council has not added the special signs to its rules. Readers disagree sharply. A brand has to choose and apply the choice everywhere. Neutral phrasing often works best in interfaces and short copy, where every character counts. A table of standard terms in the chosen form helps writers stay consistent.

Number and date formats round out the chapter. German uses a comma as the decimal separator and a point or thin space to group thousands, and dates run day, month, year. Specify them once, with examples, so price lists and product sheets match the rest of the brand.

These rules look small. German readers notice them first.

Many brandbooks are full of adjectives: use generous white space, keep photography authentic, apply the colour palette with confidence. Each of these reads well in a presentation. None of them tells a designer at an outside studio what to do on a Tuesday afternoon with a deadline. A rule that cannot be checked will be interpreted, and every interpretation drifts a little further from the original idea.

The fix is to turn each rule into something measurable or visible. White space becomes a margin defined as a multiple of the logo height. Authentic photography becomes a short list: natural light, real employees or customers, no staged handshakes, no stock images with watermarks cropped out. Confident colour becomes a ratio, such as one accent colour per layout on a mostly neutral base. The spirit of the rule stays while the ambiguity goes.

A useful test is to hand a rule to two designers separately. If they produce clearly different results and both can argue they followed it, the rule is too loose. Rewrite it until the results converge. This takes time during the brandbook project. It saves far more later.

Precision does not mean a rule for everything. Some areas should stay open on purpose, for example the choice of image within an approved style, or the composition of a campaign poster. Say so explicitly. A sentence such as this area is left to the judgement of the designer tells people where freedom starts. Silence leaves them guessing whether they missed a page.

Examples carry more weight than descriptions. For every important rule, show one correct application and, where the error is common, one incorrect one. Use real formats from the business: a product sheet, a social post, a trade fair banner. Readers skim the text and study the pictures. Make the pictures do the teaching.

Numbers belong in the rules wherever the brand depends on them. Think of minimum logo width in print and on screen, type sizes for headline, body and captions, line spacing, corner radius on buttons and icon stroke width. These are boring details. They are also the ones that quietly vary between suppliers.

Wording should be plain and direct. Write use the dark blue for headlines rather than headlines may benefit from the use of dark blue. Keep one instruction per sentence. Avoid words like ideally, where possible and should generally. They turn rules into suggestions without anyone noticing.

Finally, date the brandbook and give each rule a clear status: required, recommended or optional. Reviewers can then check a piece of work against the required list in a few minutes. Disagreements move from taste to evidence, and that is the point of writing rules at all.

A brandbook explains the rules. The asset kit is what people actually use to follow them. It is the folder of logo files, fonts, colour swatches, icons, templates and approved images that accompanies the document. When the kit is incomplete or badly organised, even a good brandbook fails. People take the logo from a screenshot, retype the colours by eye and invent their own layouts.

Logo files come first and need the most care. Provide each version the brandbook describes: primary, secondary, single colour, reversed. Supply each in vector format for print and large signage, as SVG for the web and as PNG with a transparent background for office tools. Include a small favicon set. Label everything clearly.

File naming deserves a short convention. A name such as brand, logo, primary, reversed, followed by the format, tells a reader everything before the file opens. Avoid names like final, final two or new. Keep the same pattern across every asset type. Sorting then works like a catalogue.

Fonts are a licensing question as much as a technical one. Read the licence first. Some licences cover only the design team, others include web use or app embedding at extra cost. Where staff cannot install the brand font, name an approved system fallback and set it in the office templates. The brandbook should repeat that fallback so nobody chooses one at random.

Colour swatches should arrive as files the software can import. Provide palette files for the main design tools, plus a plain text sheet with every value in each colour model. Nobody should copy numbers from a PDF.

Templates are where the kit saves the most time. Presentation slides, letterhead, email signature, social media frames and a basic document layout cover most daily needs. Build them with locked master elements and clearly marked editable areas. A template that breaks when someone adds a line will be abandoned within a week.

Structure the folder by use, not by file type. A marketing assistant looks for social media, not for PNG. A printer looks for print, not for vector. Add a one page readme at the top that explains the folders and names who to ask for anything missing.

Hosting matters too. A shared drive, a brand portal or a simple web page can all work, as long as there is one current location. Email attachments spread outdated logos. When the kit changes, remove the old version rather than adding a new folder beside it. Record the date of each update in the readme so users know which version they hold.