An image style guide turns “make it look like us” into rules anyone can apply: how images are cropped, graded and composed, what they show, what mood they carry and what they must never do. It sits inside your wider brand guidelines, and it matters most when several people, suppliers or AI tools produce images for the same brand.
Start from the brand, not the pictures
Before writing rules, decide what the images are for. A brand that wants to feel calm and premium will choose different subjects and crops from one that wants to feel energetic and local. Write two or three sentences describing the feeling, then test every rule against them. If you are still shaping the wider identity, Building a Consistent Visual Identity Across Digital Channels covers colour, type and layout, and What Makes a Brand Look Premium? explains the signals that images contribute.
The sections a useful guide contains
1. Subject and story
State what you photograph or illustrate, and what you do not. For example, a Brisbane cafe might choose real staff and customers in natural light, and ban stock images of generic hands holding coffee. Add a short list of recurring subjects (products, people, places, process) and how each is shown.
2. Composition and crop
Specify aspect ratios for each use (square, portrait, wide), where the subject sits, how much empty space to leave for text, and a minimum safe margin. Pre-decide crops so that the same image can be reused across channels without cutting off the subject. web.dev’s responsive images guidance makes a related point for the web: every candidate version of an image should show the same content, cropping and aspect ratio, differing only in size, so the page looks the same whichever file the browser chooses.
3. Colour and grade
Describe the grade in plain words and reference values: warm or cool, contrast level, saturation, how skin tones are treated, and which brand colours may appear in the frame. Where you edit in software, save the grade as a preset or look-up table and name it in the guide so everyone starts from the same point.
4. Light and mood
Record the lighting you want (soft daylight, studio, evening practical light) and the emotional range (calm, confident, playful). Use three or four words, and list the opposites you want to avoid.
5. Illustration rules
For illustration and graphics, specify line weight, shape language, palette, level of detail and how characters are drawn. Say how illustrations combine with photography, or whether they never do.
6. Technical specifications
Include minimum resolution, colour space, file formats for print and web, naming conventions and where the approved library lives. Keep this short and link out for detail.
7. Accessibility and alt text
Images need text alternatives. The W3C’s alt decision tree gives a quick method: if the image contains text that appears nowhere else on the page, include it in the alt text; if the image is purely decorative, use an empty alt attribute; if it adds meaning, give a brief description that conveys that meaning; for a graph or complex information, put the information elsewhere on the page. It also notes that text in images can sometimes be replaced with web fonts. Add these rules to the guide so alt text is written consistently, not left to chance.
Do and do-not examples
Rules work better with pictures. For each section, collect two or three approved examples and two or three rejected ones, with a one-line reason under each. A simple format is below.
| Rule area | Do | Do not |
|---|---|---|
| Crop | Subject on a third, space for headline at left | Subject centred with text over their face |
| Grade | Warm, soft contrast, natural skin tones | Heavy filters, crushed blacks |
| Subject | Real products in use | Generic stock substitutes |
| Mood | Calm and confident | Staged, over-posed |
Use real examples from your own library or commissioned shoots, not other brands’ images.
Using the guide with AI-generated imagery
If AI tools produce any images, the guide needs a short section on them: which uses are allowed, what must be reviewed by a person, how products and people may be depicted, and how generated images are matched to the grade and mood. For product images in particular, Product Photography vs AI-Generated Product Imagery discusses where each approach fits. Accuracy matters most: an image must not misrepresent what the customer will receive.
Making the guide stick
- Test it on someone new. Ask a colleague or supplier to produce three images from the guide alone, and fix what confuses them.
- Keep it short. Aim for a few pages with examples, not a manual nobody opens.
- Put it where people work. Store it with the asset library and link it from the brief template.
- Review it twice a year. Update examples as the brand evolves, and keep a dated change note.
- Name an owner. Someone should approve exceptions so the guide does not erode.
Limits
A style guide cannot replace judgement. It guarantees consistency, not quality, and an over-strict guide can produce flat, repetitive images. Leave room for variation inside the rules, and note which rules are firm and which are preferences.
Where Radiance Impact fits
Radiance Impact’s Studio works across brand films, animation and character design, and post-production, which is where image rules turn into actual footage and frames. If you want help defining or applying a visual style, see Creative and AI Production or contact us.
Sources
- Decision tree for alt text on images, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative
- Responsive images, web.dev
