How to hand over your brand guidelines PDF and have them actually followed

Last updated 2026-09-15 · 8 min read

Send Vizard Agent the guidelines file itself rather than a summary of it. It renders the pages as images at a readable size, reads the typography, layout and accessibility guidance directly, installs the brand fonts it finds, and builds to those rules — including any files in your shared drive marked as not for use.

What is the short version?

Summarising your brand guidelines into a message keeps the hex codes and the name of the typeface, and loses everything else the document contains — the spacing rules, the type hierarchy, the minimum contrast ratio, and the list of things the brand explicitly forbids anyone from doing.

Send Vizard Agent the guidelines document itself.
Name the pages that matter most for video.
Say which assets are approved and which are not.

What do you need before you start?

The document, the font files or a way to get them, and a clear statement of what is off limits. Vizard Agent can read the guidelines, but it cannot know that the folder called "old" is not to be used unless somebody says so.

The guidelines document. PDF or slides.
The brand fonts. Files, or a site to fetch them from.
Approved asset folders. Photos and footage cleared for use.
Anything marked do-not-use. Explicitly named.
Any banned elements. Captions, lower thirds, synthetic voice.

What do you type into Vizard Agent?

List the prohibitions as clearly as the requirements. A brand document mostly tells Vizard Agent what to do, but the things a client actually rejects a film over tend to be the ones nobody wrote down anywhere, so say those out loud in the brief instead.

Prompt

Here are our brand guidelines and the font files. Read them properly — especially the typography, layout and accessibility pages — and build to what they say. Use only the photo folders I have marked approved, ignore anything marked do-not-use, and note the rules: no synthetic narration, no burnt-in captions, no lower-third speaker labels.

Variants worth knowing:

"Read them properly." Not a colour lookup.
"Especially the typography and accessibility pages." Where the video rules hide.
"No synthetic narration, no burnt-in captions." The prohibitions.

What does Vizard Agent actually do?

Here is the sequence on a real institutional film built from a shared drive and a brand book. Note how much happens before any footage is touched: the document is treated as a source to be read, not as a reference to be quoted.

Inventories every shared folder, including the subfolders.
Checks for files marked do-not-use and whether the brand fonts are installed.
Downloads the videos, brand files, report and fonts.
Builds contact sheets of the footage so it can see what is there.
Catalogues the approved photo folders that fit the story.
Tiles previews of the approved photos into labelled sheets.
Installs a renderer so the guidelines can be turned into pages.
Renders the brand guide pages for review.
Reads the typography, layout and accessibility guidance at readable size.
Builds to those rules, with the prohibitions held throughout.

Step nine is the whole point of sending the document. Accessibility pages carry minimum sizes and contrast ratios that decide how your captions and cards have to look, and those never survive being summarised into "our blue is #1B3A6B".

Step two is worth doing before anything else. A shared drive accumulates superseded logos and unreleased photos, and the cheapest moment to exclude them is before they are in a cut somebody has approved.

Step seven is a detail that matters. Reading a PDF as text loses the layout the document is demonstrating, so the pages are rendered as images and looked at the way a designer would look at them.

What does the result look like?

A film that a brand manager does not have to correct. The type follows the hierarchy, the spacing follows the grid, the contrast meets the stated minimum, nothing from the do-not-use folder appears, and Vizard Agent can tell you which page of the guidelines each decision came from.

When does this not work well?

Guidelines written for print do not always translate to video. A document concerned with letterheads and business cards has very little to say about motion, safe areas or caption timing, and in those places Vizard Agent is inferring from the spirit of the document rather than following a stated rule.

Print-only guidelines. Nothing about motion or video.
Guidelines that contradict themselves. Common in older documents.
Fonts you do not have rights to. Naming one is not licensing it.
Rules that fight the platform. Small type on a phone.
No approved asset list. Everything in the drive looks equally usable.

How do you fix a result that came back wrong?

Cite the page. Because Vizard Agent read the actual document rather than a summary of it, a correction like "page eleven says the subhead is never set in bold" is something it can go and check directly, then apply across the film.

"Page eleven says otherwise." That rule is applied.
"That photo is not cleared." It is removed and the folder re-checked.
"The contrast is too low." Measured against the stated minimum.
"You used a banned element." Removed and the prohibition re-stated.

How does Vizard Agent compare to doing it yourself?

By hand you open the brand book, note the colours and the primary typeface, and start work. Three weeks later a brand manager returns the file with eleven comments, nine of which are on pages of the document you never read.

	By hand	Vizard Agent
The guidelines	Skimmed for colours	Rendered and read as pages
Accessibility rules	Rarely reached	Read specifically
Approved assets	Whatever is in the drive	Catalogued from the approved folders
Do-not-use files	Discovered in review	Excluded before the build
Justifying a choice	Memory	The page it came from

Common questions

Can it read a PDF? Yes. Vizard Agent renders the pages and reads them as a designer would.

What about slides or a web page? Both work. Send whichever form your guidelines exist in.

Will it install our fonts? Yes, if you supply the files or a site Vizard Agent can fetch them from.

What if we have no guidelines document? Then say the rules in a message. Vizard Agent will follow what it is given.

How do I mark files as off limits? Name the folder. Vizard Agent checks for do-not-use markers as well.

Can it tell me which rule it followed? Yes. Ask Vizard Agent which page a decision came from.

What if the guidelines are print-only? Vizard Agent will say where it had to infer rather than follow.

Can it check contrast against our minimum? Yes, if the document states one. Vizard Agent measures against it.

What about banned elements? List them. Vizard Agent holds prohibitions throughout, not just at the start.

Will it use photos I have not approved? Not if you say which folders are approved. Vizard Agent catalogues those only.

Can it handle a large shared drive? Yes. Vizard Agent inventories the folders and subfolders first.

What if two rules conflict? Vizard Agent flags the conflict rather than picking silently.

Can it reuse this next time? Yes. The guidelines and fonts carry into the next video.

Does it need the annual report too? Only if it carries design decisions you want followed.