How to turn your brand guidelines PDF into AI rules
Keep only the parts of the brand book that change a picture: photography, color, casting, art direction, packaging, and any legal lines about claims or people. Skip logo clear space, stationery and type specs unless text goes on the image. Rewrite each kept line as something a camera can do, fit the result on one page, and if the book has no photography section, write one from your 20 best images.
Which parts of a brand book matter for images?
Go through the contents page and sort every section into keep, skip or partly. Keep anything that changes what the camera sees.
| Section of the brand book | Keep for AI images? | What to take |
|---|---|---|
| Brand story, mission, values | A little | One sentence on who the brand is for and how its pictures should feel |
| Tone of voice | Partly | Three words, each translated into a visual fact |
| Logo: clear space, minimum size, misuse | No | Place the real logo in a design tool after the render |
| Color palette | Yes | Names and hex codes; which colors can fill a frame and which are accents |
| Typography | Only if text goes on images | Typeface names for the design tool, not for the model |
| Photography or imagery | Yes, all of it | Light, lens, composition, subjects, retouching limits, what to avoid |
| Art direction and layout | Partly | Crops, empty space for copy, how pictures sit with type |
| Illustration and icons | Only if your images mix in illustration | Style, line weight, color |
| People, casting and representation | Yes | Who appears, ages, poses, how people are shown |
| Packaging | Yes, for accuracy | Label, colors and finishes as printed |
| Legal and claims | Yes | What pictures must not imply, consent rules, other brands’ marks |
| Stationery, signage, email, merchandise | No | Leave for the design team |
How to cut 60 pages to one
- Export only the pages you kept into a new PDF. Most PDF readers can export or print a page range.
- Highlight every sentence that describes something a camera could see. Skip the rest.
- Rewrite each highlighted sentence as a rule with a visible test, as in the table below.
- Merge duplicates. The same rule often appears in two or three sections.
- Sort the rules into the twelve parts of a brand rules page.
- Turn the book’s "don’t" pages into a never-do list.
- Read the page against 10 approved images. If an approved image breaks a rule, either the rule or the image is wrong; decide which.
- Date it and name an owner.
Rewriting brand-book language
| Typical brand-book line | Rule a model can follow |
|---|---|
| Our photography is authentic and optimistic. | People doing a real task, eyes on the task. Daylight. Real skin texture. Smiles only when something in the scene causes them. |
| Imagery should feel premium. | Matte surfaces. One product, one prop at most. Soft light from camera left. |
| Use natural light where possible. | Daylight from one window at camera left. No visible lamps. Shadows fall right. |
| Show products in real-life contexts. | Kitchens and tables like our customers’ homes: small city apartments, lived-in, with no showroom styling. |
| Colors should feel on brand. | Palette: chalk #F2EEE6 about 60%, sage #9DAA8C about 20%, tea amber #C8893A only on the product. |
| Avoid clichés. | Name them: no coffee beans, no latte art, no steam curls. |
| Celebrate diversity. | Across every set of ten images, a range of ages, skin tones and body types, in roles that matter to the scene. |
When the book has no photography section
If your book covers logo, color and type and stops there, the photography rules have to come from your pictures. Pull 10 to 20 of your best images, measure what they share and write it down as your visual DNA. Its light, lens, composition, grain and casting lines become the photography section the book never had. Show it to whoever owns the brand book, so the next edition includes it.
A one-page template
AI IMAGE RULES, FROM THE ________ BRAND BOOK Source: brand book version ____, pages ________ Rules version: ________ Owner: ________ WHO (one line): ________ FEELING, AS VISIBLE FACTS (three lines at most): ________ PALETTE (name, hex, role, most of the frame it may fill): - ________ LIGHT: ________ LENS AND DISTANCE: ________ COMPOSITION AND COPY SPACE: ________ SURFACES AND PROPS (allowed / banned): ________ CASTING: ________ FINISH (grain, contrast, retouching limits): ________ PACKAGING AS PRINTED: ________ TEXT ON IMAGES (never in the render / set in a design tool). Typeface: ________ NEVER DO (from the book’s don’ts, six to twelve lines): ________ CLAIMS AND LEGAL (from the legal pages): ________ OPEN QUESTIONS FOR THE BRAND TEAM: ________ CHANGE LOG: date, what changed, why
Let a chat assistant do the first pass
A chat assistant can read a long PDF and draft steps 2 to 5 for you. Ask for a page number with every rule, so you can check each line against its source in a minute.
You are helping me turn our brand guidelines into rules for AI-generated photos. From the attached PDF, extract only what changes how a photo looks: color (names and hex codes), photography, lighting, composition, casting, props, retouching, packaging, and legal lines about claims or people. Ignore logo clear space, stationery, email, signage and type specs. Rewrite every kept line as a rule a person could check by looking at a photo. Replace adjectives with visible facts. Output one page in this order: who, feeling as visible facts, palette, light, lens and distance, composition, surfaces and props, casting, finish, packaging, text on images, never do, claims and legal. After each rule, give the page number it came from. List anything unclear under "open questions" instead of guessing.
Keep the rules current
Tie the rules to the brand book’s version, and run the pass again when the book changes. Between editions, change the rules through review: when the same reason rejects images twice, the fix goes into the rules, with a line in the change log. See how to review AI images as a team.
Some tools now treat guidelines as a record that keeps learning. Adobe announced Brand Intelligence for its enterprise GenStudio product in April 2026, and says it learns from review feedback, annotations, approvals and rejections. Google’s Pomelli went the other way in May 2026: it can generate a brand book from the profile it builds of your business. A dated rules page and a review log give you a version you can read line by line and take to any tool.
Questions people also ask
- Can I upload the whole brand book to an AI image tool?
- Some tools accept one, sometimes with a page limit. Even where the whole book fits, cut it first, so the tool reads the photography, color and casting pages instead of dozens of pages about logos and stationery.
- What if the brand book and our best images disagree?
- Decide which one is the brand now. If your approved images have moved on from an old book, write the rules from the images and flag the book for an update. If the images drifted from a book that still holds, fix the images.
- Does legal need to review the AI rules?
- Legal should review the claims and people lines: what images may imply about results, how models are shown, and other brands’ marks. The rest is a brand decision. See FTC rules for AI product images.
Where Overs fits
Overs reads a brand guidelines PDF of up to 24 pages, along with your website and existing photos, when it writes a brand’s rules. For a longer book, export the photography, color, casting and packaging pages into a shorter PDF first.
Free for 40 photos a month. The AI that makes the photos is billed separately, on your own key, with no markup from Overs.