Using Anthropics Skills for Consistent Brand Guidelines

Maintaining consistent brand guidelines, colors, and typography across all your marketing content can be time-consuming—especially when working with multiple team members or AI tools. Anthropics Skills solve this problem by encapsulating your brand expertise into a reusable package that Claude can apply automatically.

In this article, we'll focus on the brand-guidelines skill as a practical example of how to use Anthropics Skills to ensure every piece of content follows your brand standards.

Anatomy of a Skill: The SKILL.md File

Every Anthropics Skill starts with a SKILL.md file—a simple markdown document with two key parts: YAML frontmatter for metadata and markdown content for instructions.

Let's examine the official brand-guidelines skill from the GitHub repository to see how this works:

Frontmatter: Skill Metadata

---
name: brand-guidelines
description: Applies Anthropic's official brand colors and typography to any sort of artifact that may benefit from having Anthropic's look-and-feel. Use it when brand colors or style guidelines, visual formatting, or company design standards apply.
license: Complete terms in LICENSE.txt
---

This metadata tells Claude:

• name: A unique identifier for the skill (lowercase, hyphens for spaces)
• description: What the skill does and when to use it
• license: Legal terms for using the skill

Content: Skill Instructions

The markdown content below the frontmatter provides Claude with the specific expertise it needs. For the brand-guidelines skill, this includes:

Core Brand Elements

The skill defines Anthropic's official color palette and typography rules:

Main Colors:

• Dark: #141413 - Primary text and dark backgrounds
• Light: #faf9f5 - Light backgrounds and text on dark
• Mid Gray: #b0aea5 - Secondary elements
• Light Gray: #e8e6dc - Subtle backgrounds

Accent Colors:

• Orange: #d97757 - Primary accent
• Blue: #6a9bcc - Secondary accent
• Green: #788c5d - Tertiary accent

Typography:

• Headings: Poppins (with Arial fallback)
• Body Text: Lora (with Georgia fallback)

Functional Features

The skill also includes rules for how these brand elements should be applied:

Smart Font Application:

• Applies Poppins font to headings (24pt and larger)
• Applies Lora font to body text
• Automatically falls back to Arial/Georgia if custom fonts unavailable
• Preserves readability across all systems

This combination of clear metadata and detailed instructions allows Claude to consistently apply Anthropic's brand identity to any document or artifact.

Practical Use Cases for Brand Guidelines Skill

Here are some real-world scenarios where the brand-guidelines skill can streamline your marketing workflow:

1. Consistent Social Media Content

When creating social media posts, Claude can automatically apply:

• Your brand color palette to images and graphics
• The correct font hierarchy for headlines and body text
• Consistent tone and voice across all captions
• Brand-specific hashtags and call-to-action phrases

2. On-Brand Marketing Collateral

Generate brochures, flyers, and presentations that adhere to:

• Your company's typography rules
• Approved color combinations
• Layout guidelines (margin sizes, spacing, image placement)
• Brand messaging frameworks

3. Uniform Email Campaigns

Ensure every email follows your brand guidelines:

• Email template structure
• Header and footer design
• Button styles and colors
• Content formatting and tone

How to Use the Brand Guidelines Skill

Using the skill is simple across all Claude platforms:

1. Enable the Skill:

   • In Claude Code: /plugin install brand-guidelines@anthropic-agent-skills
   • In Claude.ai: Access via the skills menu
   • Via API: Include skill reference in your requests

2. Create Content with Brand Consistency:

   • Simply ask Claude to create content (e.g., "Write a social media post about our new product")
   • The skill will automatically apply your brand guidelines
   • For custom requests: "Design a newsletter banner using our brand colors and typography"

Benefits for Marketing Teams

• Time Savings: No more manual reviews for brand consistency
• Consistency: Every piece of content follows the same brand standards
• Scalability: Easily scale content creation without compromising brand identity
• Team Alignment: Ensures all team members (and AI tools) follow the same guidelines

Creating Your Own Custom Brand Guidelines Skill

While Anthropic provides an official brand-guidelines skill example, you can create a custom version for your organization:

1. Use the template structure:

   ---
   name: my-company-brand-guidelines
   description: Applies My Company's brand colors, typography, and style guidelines to content.
   ---
   
   # My Company Brand Guidelines
   
   ## Color Palette
   - Primary: `#your-primary-color` - Main brand color
   - Secondary: `#your-secondary-color` - Supporting color
   - Accent: `#your-accent-color` - Call-to-action color
   
   ## Typography
   - Headings: Your Brand Font (fallback to Arial)
   - Body Text: Your Body Font (fallback to Georgia)
   
   ## Tone & Voice
   - Keep messaging friendly and approachable
   - Avoid jargon
   - Emphasize customer-centric language
   
   ## Layout Rules
   - Use 16px margin on all sides
   - Space between sections: 24px

2. Focus on specificity:

   • Include exact color codes
   • Define font families and sizes
   • Outline tone and voice guidelines
   • Add examples of do's and don'ts

With a custom brand guidelines skill, you can ensure every piece of content—whether created by Claude or your team—aligns perfectly with your brand identity.

To learn more, visit the Anthropics Skills GitHub repository or explore the official documentation.