Brand OS Portal

One-page brand rules for your team: a cheat sheet people actually use.

Put your brand on one page: logo, colours, fonts, voice and what never to do. Pin it where your team works.

Get Brand OS in your brand, free Try it now

Free: your brand in 3 real designs, in 48 hours.

One-page brand rules are a cheat sheet with six parts: how to use the logo, the colours, the fonts, how you sound, what you never do, and who to ask. A team member should read it in two minutes.

Copy the template below, fill it with your real values, and pin it where people make things. A cheat sheet stops most off-brand work. For the rest, people need tools that keep the brand right for them.

By Vedran Obradović · Updated 7 November 2026

The whole Brand OS Portal in two minutesFilm A. Sound on.

Hear me explain Social StudioA short video. I show it on a real brand.

Get Brand OS in your brand, free

Why a team needs a cheat sheet, not a book.

A 100-page guideline is good for a record. Nobody opens it on a busy Tuesday.

A new sales hire needs a logo, a colour and a tone, today. A partner needs to know what not to do. A founder with no designer needs to say yes or no to a post in ten seconds.

A cheat sheet gives them that. It does not replace your full guideline. It is the front page of it. If you want to write the full version, read how to write one-page brand guidelines and what to include in brand guidelines.

Social Studio in a Brand OS Portal: the rules are inside the design.

The six parts of the cheat sheet.

Keep each part to a few lines. If it needs a paragraph, move it to the full guideline.

Part 1

Logo

Which file to use on light and dark. How much space around it. Never stretch it. See logo usage guidelines.

Part 2

Colours

Two or three main colours with their codes, and one rule for the accent colour.

Part 3

Fonts

One font for headlines, one for text. Sizes for slides and posts.

Part 4

Voice

Three words for how you sound, and two words you never use. See brand voice guidelines.

Part 5

Never do

Five clear examples of what breaks the brand.

Part 6

Who to ask

One name and one way to reach them, so questions have a home.

Free tool

Are your brand rules clear enough to fit on one page?

If you cannot write the rules short, the brand may not be clear yet. Answer a few short questions and get your brand score and the next thing to fix. It is free.

Open the full tool: Brand Check

Copy this one-page template.

Fill in the brackets. Keep it to one page. Print it, pin it, and put it at the top of your team chat.

One-page brand rules

[COMPANY] BRAND RULES - one page

LOGO
Use: [file name] on light, [file name] on dark.
Space: keep clear space equal to [the height of the letter X] on all sides.
Never: stretch, tilt, recolour, add a shadow.

COLOURS
Main: [colour 1 + code], [colour 2 + code]
Accent: [colour 3 + code] - used once per page, for one thing.

FONTS
Headlines: [font]. Text: [font]. Slide text never below [size].

VOICE
Voice: [word 1], [word 2], [word 3].
Never say: [word], [word].

NEVER DO
1. [example]  2. [example]  3. [example]  4. [example]  5. [example]

QUESTIONS
Ask [name] at [email or channel]. Answer within [one working day].

Write the voice line in the way you want people to write. Short and plain beats clever.

Brand OS Portal

Get 3 templates in your brand. Free.

Leave your email. I design them by hand and send them to you within 48 hours. It costs you nothing.

Does your cheat sheet pass?

Tick what is true. Your ticks stay on this device.

It fits on one page, one side
A new hire can read it in two minutes
It names the exact logo files
Colours have codes, not just names
It shows five things to never do
It names one person to ask
It sits where people work, not in a deep folder
It was checked by someone who is not a designer

0 of 8 done

Six or more ticks is a sheet people will use. Fewer, and shorten it again.

Where a cheat sheet stops working.

A page cannot make a slide for you. People still go off brand even with templates.

Rules on paper depend on memory. A busy person forgets, or guesses. That is why brand guidelines nobody follows are so common. The fix is to move the rules into the place where the work is made.

In a Brand OS Portal, the team picks a design I made for the brand, changes the words, and downloads it. The logo, colours and fonts stay right because the design holds them. Nobody has to check a sheet. A designer is still the right call for strategy and a new identity. The portal covers the daily work after that.

MTG

Brand OS Pro Portal. The team makes its own posts. No waiting.

Deepsea Networks

Brand OS Core Portal. The CEO writes and designs an on-brand LinkedIn post in about 3 minutes.

Roll it out in one afternoon.

Four small steps.

Step 1

Fill the template

Use real values. Pull logo files and codes from your brand assets.

Step 2

Test it on one person

Give it to someone new. Ask them to make a post. Fix what confused them.

Step 3

Pin it

Team chat, onboarding mail and the top of the shared folder. See brand onboarding for new hires.

Step 4

Review it twice a year

Update codes, files and examples. Keep one owner, as in brand governance for startups.

Social Studio

Try one Brand OS Portal tool

Rules that live inside the tool.

This is a real tool from a real Brand OS Portal, on the MTG brand. Change the words and the photo. The rules are built in, so nobody needs to remember them.

Watch