Share brand guidelines with clients so they get used

To share brand guidelines with clients in a way that sticks, give them one page that answers the daily questions (which logo, which blue, which font) and keep the long PDF as a backup. Designers often wonder whether a client ever opens the guidelines after the project ends, and the usual reason they do not is simple: the kit arrived as a zip and a long PDF in an email that got buried. This handover checklist shows what to include, how to name and version files, and how to point the client to one place.

In Tarkle, that one place is a Brand Page: a clean page for a brand's logos, colours, fonts and images that you share with a link. The Free plan includes 1 Brand Page.

Why clients stop opening the guidelines

A client rarely needs the whole document. They need the right logo for a banner, the hex code for a slide, the font name for a new hire. If finding that takes a search through old emails, they ask a friend or grab a logo from their website, and the brand drifts.

So treat the handover as a product with a job: the client's team can find the right file in under a minute, without you. Everything below serves that.

Prepare: what goes into the handover

Put these in the kit, in this order of importance:

1. Logos in the formats people really use. A primary logo, a square or icon version, a one-colour version and a reversed version for dark backgrounds. Vector (SVG, plus your PDF or EPS master) for print and web, PNG with a transparent background for everything else.

2. Colours as values, not swatches. HEX for screens, and CMYK or Pantone for print where the brand uses them. Name each colour (Primary, Ink, Accent) so people say the same word.

3. Fonts with their source. The headline and body font, and where they come from: a free Google font or a licensed font the client must buy. Say who holds the licence.

4. Three to five usage rules. Clear space, minimum size, what never to do. A short rule that gets read beats a long chapter that does not.

5. The full guidelines PDF, for the person who wants all the detail.

6. Approved artwork: social templates, a letterhead, an email signature, whatever you delivered that the client will reuse.

Name and version the files

Pick a naming pattern once and use it for every file: client-asset-variant-colour.ext, for example acme-logo-primary-color.svg, acme-logo-mono-white.png, acme-icon-square.png. Lower case, no spaces, no "final" or "final-v2" in the name. The client should know what a file is without opening it.

Version the kit as a whole, not each file. Put a date or a version number on the guidelines PDF and in the page text ("Brand kit v1, March 2027"), and keep older sets in a folder called Archive that you do not share. Hand over only the latest set. When a client has five logos called "logo", one of them will end up on a printed banner.

In Tarkle, Smart rename gives a batch of library files clear names, and you review every new name before it applies. Renaming by rule is free on every plan, and only AI renaming needs Pro. On Pro, you can upload a new version of a file, see its history and go back to an earlier one. That helps when you fix a logo after delivery.

Deliver: one page to share brand guidelines with clients

A link to one page works better than a zip because the client can open it on a phone, forward it to a printer and come back to it. A zip gets saved to a downloads folder and forgotten.

A Brand Page in Tarkle is that page: a clean page for a brand's logos, colours, fonts and images, to use inside your team or share with a client. To build one, click Brands in the sidebar, then Create brand, and work through the steps: Basics, Links, Logos, Colors, Fonts, Assets, SEO and Settings. If the client already has a website, Start from a website fills in the name, summary, logo, colours, fonts and social links it can find from the domain you type, so you check and correct instead of typing.

Here is how the checklist maps to the page:

• Logos: add an icon, a main logo and a banner, plus any extra logos. Give each extra logo a name, a type (primary, secondary, monochrome, reversed, icon, favicon, square or social media) and a use (digital, print or all purpose). Visitors can download a one-color black or white copy of a transparent logo, and Tarkle makes those copies automatically. This works when the logo has a transparent background, so upload SVG logos with transparency for the best result.

• Colors: enter a primary colour, an optional secondary colour and up to 30 more, each with an optional name. Visitors see HEX, RGB and CMYK, and Pantone when you set it. For print, set CMYK and a Pantone name yourself. Without them the page shows an approximate CMYK worked out from the screen colour.

• Fonts: choose Google (pick from the list) or Custom (a name, and optionally a font file). Visitors can download a custom font file you upload, so only upload fonts you may share.

• Assets: add collections for templates, artwork or the guidelines PDF. A collection holds up to 200 files of any type, up to 100 MB per file, and every collection needs a name.

• Guidelines: write short sections, with one-click presets for Logo usage, Do and don't, Voice and tone, and Imagery. A page holds up to 20 guideline sections.

The page is not live until you click Publish. Save as draft keeps it hidden, and Unpublish takes it back to a draft. Publishing asks for a summary, story, website, icon, main logo, primary colour, headline font, body font and banner, and a name for every asset collection, so plan for those.

Choose who can open it

In Settings → Access, choose Public, Password protected or Restricted.

• Public means anyone with the link can open it, and it can appear in search engines once published.

• Password protected means anyone with the password can open it. You share the password yourself. Visitors stay unlocked for 30 days in that browser, and your team is never asked for it.

• Restricted means only the contact or organization you assign, and your team, can open it. Assign it in Settings → Assign this brand. Everyone else sees a page that says the brand is private, with a form to ask for access by email. Asking does not let them in: you assign them, or share a password.

If you want to know who takes the logos, turn on Require approval to download in Settings → Downloads. Visitors then use Request access instead of Download, and you decide: click Approve or Reject. An approved request emails the visitor a link that lets them download in the browser where they open it, for one year. No email is sent when you reject.

The Brands page and each brand show three cards: Page views, Downloads and Access requests. There are no per-file rankings: the cards show totals.

Put your name on it

A kit link that looks like it belongs to you is easier to trust and easier to remember. On Pro and Agency, each Brand Page can have its own custom domain, such as brand.clientname.com: save the brand first, open Settings → Custom domain, add the domain and set the DNS records Tarkle shows you. On the Free plan, you get 1 Brand Page and no brand domain. The Powered by Tarkle line always shows on Free, and Pro can remove it.

Tell the client where it lives

The best page fails if nobody remembers it exists. Put the link in three places before you close the project:

1. The handover email, with one line on what the page holds and the version or date.

2. The project close-out message or document, so it is in the thread the client searches.

3. The client's own tools: ask them to bookmark it or pin the link in their team chat.

Then walk someone through it for five minutes on the final call. Show them where to find the logo and the colour codes, and nothing else. A client who has used the page once will use it again.

If a client's team should edit the page later, assign the brand to the client's contact or organization in Settings → Assign this brand. The client then sees it under Brands in the client portal. By default, clients can view. To let them edit, turn on Allow organization contacts to create brands in your workspace settings. The client portal is a Pro feature.

Keep the page up to date

A brand page that is out of date is worse than none. After you replace a logo or fix a colour value, open the published page and check that visitors see the right file, and replace it on the page if they do not. Put a reminder in your calendar twice a year for retainer clients. For a one-off project, state in the handover who owns updates from now on: you, on a paid change, or the client.

When a client needs larger sets, such as photography or layered source files, send those separately. The post on sharing source files with clients after final approval covers that stage, and file sharing for designers covers the working routine around it. If you look after many brands and wonder whether you need a full asset manager, Brand asset management for small business gives the five basics and a quick check.

Set this up today

1. Clean the logo set, name every file with one pattern and move old versions to an Archive folder.

2. Write down colour values (HEX, plus CMYK or Pantone for print) and the font names with their licence source.

3. Write three to five usage rules in plain words.

4. Build the page, choose Public or Password protected, and publish it. Start for free to try a Brand Page on the Free plan.

5. Send the link in the handover email, and walk the client through it once.

What to remember about Tarkle

Tarkle's Brand Page is a clean page for a brand's logos, colours, fonts and images, to use inside your team or share with a client. You choose whether it is public, password protected or restricted, and visitors can download logos in several formats, and the whole brand as a zip. A Brand Page is not a full digital asset manager (DAM), so check that before you pick it for a large library. Start for free.