Brand Guide for Marketing Teams
You are the brand's guardian, but you did not sign up to be its help desk. Branddoq gives everyone who touches the brand one address for rules and files, and gives you a way to check layouts before they go out.
A normal week in a brand team
- Sales sends a deck with the 2019 logo, from a template someone saved locally.
- HR posts a job ad on LinkedIn in a blue that is close, but not yours.
- The regional agency asks for the font files. Again. You send the ZIP. Again.
- A trade-fair partner needs the CMYK values and gets them from a PDF that was superseded last spring.
- The new guideline was announced by e-mail. Twelve people read it.
None of this is malice. People use what they find. If the brand guide is a PDF on a shared drive, they find an old copy or nothing at all.
What changes with a living brand guide
Brand guidelines software for marketing teams solves a distribution problem first and a design problem second:
- One link to remember. branddoq.io/your-brand is where rules and files live. You put it in the intranet, the e-mail footer and the agency briefing.
- Search. Someone types "minimum size" and lands on the logo rule, not on page 47.
- Files where the rule is. The colour palette lists HEX, RGB, CMYK, Pantone and RAL. The download module next to it holds the logo package. No second system.
- A check before things go out. Upload a layout, get a verdict against your own rules.
How the workflow looks with Branddoq
1. Get the existing guide in
With an existing PDF, AI guide creation on Premium and Enterprise produces a first draft, billed in AI credits. Otherwise you build pages from modules: text, colour palette, typography with self-hosted font upload, logo showcase with variants, clear space, minimum size and forbidden uses, do/don't pairs, principles, gallery, video, table and downloads. The live preview shows exactly what colleagues will see.
2. Set up the media pool
Folders per topic: logos, templates, imagery, fonts. Colleagues take a single file or a whole folder as ZIP. When a file changes, you replace it once.
3. Decide who sees what
Set the guide to public or protected. In a protected guide, you invite colleagues, agencies and partners as viewers; a small core team gets editor rights. Roles are admin, editor and viewer. The client portal shows your guides, usage, design-check history and guide settings such as logo, imprint, office fonts and search-engine visibility, plus a help centre with a support form. Support answers within one working day.
4. Publish, then keep editing
Draft and published are separate states. You can rework the imagery chapter for two weeks while everyone still sees the stable version.
5. Check incoming layouts
The AI Design Check accepts JPG, PNG, WebP or a PDF of up to ten pages and compares it with the guide on six criteria: colours, typography, logo, imagery, layout, tone. Colours are measured (ΔE2000), fonts and vector colours are read from PDFs, the rest is judged by Claude against the guide's own rules, each finding referencing a rule. The verdict is deterministic. Send the result to the agency instead of typing the same feedback again.
Which plan fits which team
| Situation | Plan | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Evaluate with a small pilot | Trial, €0 | 1 guide, 3 pages, 10 basic modules, 1 GB, no AI, no credit card |
| One brand, rules and files for the company | Standard, €69/month | 1 guide, unlimited pages, 5 GB, 5 design checks/month |
| One to three brands, many agency layouts to check | Premium, €149/month | 3 guides, 10 GB, 100 checks/month, AI features, 3,000 credits/month |
| Procurement needs a contract and DPA | Enterprise, from €499/month | Unlimited guides, 20 GB, unlimited checks, 10,000 credits, individual contract |
Prices include VAT, monthly, no minimum term. Payment via Stripe. Credit packs: €10, €45 or €99 for 1,000, 5,000 or 12,000 credits.
Limits to know
- No SSO; colleagues log in with e-mail and password.
- No API, no DAM integration, no Figma plugin, no version history.
- Guides live under branddoq.io/{slug}; custom domains are not available yet.
- The editing workspace is German today. Published guides are in the language you write.
- The Design Check judges rules, not taste or strategy; its imagery verdict is only as good as your imagery chapter.
- Hosted in Germany, self-hosted fonts, only necessary cookies, DPA available.
questions & answers.
Only if the guide is protected. A public guide is readable by anyone with the link, often the right choice for non-confidential rules. Protected guides require an invited viewer account.
Several editors can work in the same guide. There is no version history yet, so agree on who edits which chapter, and use the draft state to prepare larger changes before publishing.
On Premium and Enterprise, AI guide creation reads the PDF and proposes pages and modules. You correct and publish. On Standard and Trial, you build the pages by hand in the modular builder.
The Design Check runs on the guide's design-check page, so anyone with access to the guide can upload a layout. Checks count against your monthly quota; the history is visible in the portal.
see it for yourself.