Logo usage
guidelines & standards
in Westwood

A brand book that lists two or three fonts is not yet a type hierarchy. Hierarchy means naming a small set of roles: headline, subhead, body, caption, label. Each role needs a size, a weight, and a line height that stays fixed. Skip that step. A marketer picking a heading size is guessing. So is a developer coding the same component.

The first decision is how many levels the hierarchy needs. Three levels suit a simple identity: headline, body, one caption style. Five or six suit a product with dense interfaces and long reports. A reader must tell a section title from a card title. Adding levels later means retrofitting every template built on the smaller scale.

Each level needs more than a point size. Weight, spacing, and line height all shift how a size reads at different widths. A wide headline on a landing page needs different leading than the same size in a narrow sidebar. Give a ratio or a formula for this, not one fixed number. Spacing then scales with size instead of looking cramped or loose.

A hierarchy that looks tidy on a demo page can break on real content. Test it against the longest headline the business is likely to write, not a short placeholder line. A three word sample hides wrapping problems that a fourteen word product name reveals right away. Test captions the same way. A caption under a photograph often runs two lines in practice, however clean it looked as one line in a mockup.

Fallback fonts deserve their own line. Not every surface can load the licensed typeface. Some email clients strip custom fonts. Some partner sites will not embed them. Name an approved substitute for each role. State how close it must sit to the original. A fallback should read as the same brand.

Numbers, dates, and tables often break a hierarchy built for headlines and paragraphs. A typeface with display letters can have numerals that wobble in a price table or a chart axis. Specify which figure style applies where: old style or lining, tabular or proportional. A finance page and a feature page need different choices.

Accessibility sets a floor under every level. Body text below a certain size and contrast is hard to read for many visitors. A hierarchy built only for a large screen can fail on a small one. Minimum sizes. Minimum contrast. A maximum line length. All three belong here, not in a separate appendix nobody opens.

The test of a good hierarchy chapter is simple. Do two designers, working apart, produce a deck that looks like one team made it. That only happens when the rules cover the awkward cases: a heading that wraps to two lines, a caption under a photograph, a button label near body copy. Easy examples leave those decisions to guesswork.

A brand book usually assumes the design team makes everything carrying the logo. That assumption breaks down fast. A growing share of brand content now comes from creators and influencers paid to post about a product. The company often sees the finished piece only after it goes live. A chapter for this group needs a different shape than the rest of the book.

Long documents do not survive a creator brief. Most people skim one page before a deadline. Treat the guidelines the same way. Compress the essentials that actually protect the brand onto one page: the approved logo file, the minimum size it can appear at, two or three colors safe for overlay text.

Disclosure language belongs in the chapter. Do not leave it to each creator to phrase from memory. Advertising rules in many places call for a clear statement that a post is paid or gifted. Offer a short, approved sentence or hashtag for that purpose. A well meaning creator should not have to invent the wording alone.

Logo placement rules need rewriting for formats the rest of the book never mentions. A story format crops differently from a square post. A video thumbnail hides anything placed too close to the edge. Name a safe zone for each common format. One generic clear space rule is not enough.

Tone guidance should separate what must stay fixed from what should flex. A product name. A price claim. A safety statement. None of these should change, no matter who writes the post. The rest, how casual the caption sounds, can follow the voice the creator already uses. Lock down every sentence and the chapter gets ignored, since nobody wants to sound like a script.

Asset delivery matters more here than almost anywhere else in the book. A creator working from a phone rarely opens a design file. Provide a small folder of ready to use assets. Size them for the platforms actually in use.

Approval and review should stay light, or it stops happening. Days waiting for sign off pushes a creator to guess next time instead of asking. A same day review window, even a short checklist, keeps the relationship working.

A post can get it wrong. The chapter should name what happens next. A friendly note pointing to the correct asset works better than a takedown request over a minor size or color mistake. Save firmer escalation for real problems: an inaccurate claim, a competitor mentioned by name.