Build a Branded Document Template in Dochly
Why branding matters in document templates
Unbranded or inconsistently branded documents create a poor impression at the exact moment it matters most — when a customer is reviewing a proposal, signing a contract, or receiving an invoice. A well-branded document signals professionalism, builds trust, and reinforces your company's identity across every customer touchpoint.
With Dochly, branding is set once in the template — and every document generated from that template inherits it automatically. No one on the sales or ops team needs to remember to add the logo or match the font. It's built in.
Professional appearance
Branded documents look intentional and polished — not like something generated from a generic template.
Consistent across every doc
Every rep, every deal, every document — the same logo, fonts, and colors every time. No manual formatting.
Set once, applied always
Brand elements are defined in the template. Update the template once and every future document reflects the change.
Before you start: what to prepare
Gather your brand assets before opening the template editor. Having these ready before you start will save significant back-and-forth during the build.
- Company logo — PNG format with transparent background preferred. Minimum 300px wide for print-quality output. Have both horizontal and stacked versions if your brand uses both.
- Brand fonts — the exact font names used in your brand guidelines. If you use custom fonts, confirm they are web-safe or available for upload. As a fallback, identify the closest system font (e.g. if your brand uses a custom sans-serif, the fallback might be Arial or Helvetica).
- Brand colors (hex codes) — your primary brand color, secondary color, and any accent colors. You need the exact hex codes (e.g. #185FA5), not just color names. These are used for header backgrounds, table header rows, accent lines, and footer text.
- Footer content — what appears in the footer of every document: company name, address, phone, website, confidentiality notice, legal disclaimer, or page numbers.
- A reference document — an existing proposal or contract your company currently uses. This gives you a visual reference for layout, spacing, and which sections appear in which order.
Adding your logo
Your logo is the most visible brand element in any document. It typically appears in the top-left or top-center of the document header, and occasionally in the footer as a smaller version.
Upload your logo file
In the Dochly template editor, place your cursor in the header section where the logo should appear. Click the Insert Image button in the toolbar. Upload your logo file directly — PNG with transparent background is recommended for the cleanest result on any background color.
Set the logo size
After inserting, set a fixed width for the logo — typically between 120px and 200px wide depending on your document layout. Avoid using percentage-based sizing, which can produce inconsistent results across different page sizes. Lock the aspect ratio when resizing so the logo doesn't distort.
Position the logo correctly
Use the alignment tools to position the logo. Left-aligned is the most common for business documents. If your header has a colored background, make sure your logo is visible against that background — use the transparent PNG version to avoid a white box appearing around it.
Use the same logo file across all your templates. If you update your logo, you only need to update it in each template once — then all future generated documents will use the new version automatically. See editing and updating an existing template for how to make changes efficiently.
Fonts and typography
Consistent typography is one of the most impactful branding decisions in a document. Using different fonts across documents — or mixing fonts inconsistently within a document — immediately signals a lack of care and attention.
Used for section titles and the document title. Typically your brand's primary font — often a bold-weight sans-serif. Set size between 14–18px depending on hierarchy level.
Used for all paragraph text, list items, and table cell content. Should be highly readable at smaller sizes (11–12px). Avoid decorative or script fonts for body text.
Recommended system-safe font pairings:
- Arial / Arial Bold — universal, clean, works well for both headings and body text in corporate documents
- Calibri / Calibri Bold — modern, friendly, the default in Microsoft Word documents for a reason
- Georgia / Arial — classic pairing: Georgia for headings (serif), Arial for body (sans-serif)
- Helvetica / Helvetica Neue — premium feel, widely used in professional services and technology companies
Use a maximum of two fonts in any document — one for headings, one for body text. Using three or more fonts makes documents look unprofessional and harder to read.
Colors and accents
Color is used sparingly in professional documents — typically in three places: the document header background, table header rows, and accent lines or dividers. Everything else is black or dark grey text on a white background.
Primary brand color
Used for the header background, table header rows, and section title underlines. This is your main brand color — typically the most recognizable color in your logo.
Neutral / dark grey
Used for body text, table borders, and secondary information. Dark grey (#333333 or similar) is easier on the eye than pure black (#000000) for long-form text.
Light accent
A very light tint of your primary color — used for alternating table row backgrounds or section callout boxes to add visual rhythm without heavy color use.
Apply your brand color consistently: if your table headers use it, your document header should use it too. Avoid applying brand colors to body text — it reduces readability and looks cluttered. Color is most effective when used selectively.
Building the document header
The document header is the first thing a recipient sees. It sets the tone for the entire document. A well-built header includes your logo, document title, and key reference information — laid out clearly and consistently across every template.
Create the header container
Add a full-width section at the top of your template. Set the background color to your primary brand color or leave it white depending on your brand style. A colored header bar is visually striking; a white header with a bottom border line is more conservative and works well for legal and financial documents.
Add logo left, document info right
The most professional layout places the company logo on the left and document-specific information on the right — document type ("PROPOSAL", "INVOICE", "CONTRACT"), document number or reference, and the date. Use a two-column table layout to achieve this alignment reliably.
Add a separator line
A thin horizontal rule below the header creates a clean visual break between the header and the document body. Set the line color to your primary brand color or a light grey for a more subtle effect.
Page layout and margins
Correct page layout settings ensure your document looks professional when printed or viewed as a PDF. Incorrect margins cause content to run too close to the page edge or leave excessive white space.
Top and bottom: 20–25mm. Left and right: 20–25mm. These are standard business document margins — enough white space to look clean without wasting too much page area.
Use A4 for international and European documents, Letter (8.5×11") for US documents. Set this to match the primary market of your customers to avoid content being cut off when printed.
Portrait for most documents. Landscape is occasionally used for documents with wide data tables — invoices with many columns, for example.
1.15–1.5 line spacing for body text. Tighter spacing (1.0) for table cells. More generous spacing (1.5) for contracts and legal documents where readability is critical.
Styling tables
Tables appear in nearly every business document — pricing tables in proposals, line item tables in invoices, clause summaries in contracts. A well-styled table is easy to read and reinforces your brand. A plain, unstyled table looks like a spreadsheet export.
- Header row: Set the background to your primary brand color with white bold text. This immediately differentiates the header from data rows and anchors the table visually.
- Alternating rows: Use a very light tint of your brand color (or light grey) for every other row. This "zebra striping" makes tables with many rows significantly easier to read.
- Borders: Use thin borders (0.5pt) in a light grey. Avoid heavy black borders — they make tables look heavy and dated. For a more modern look, use horizontal-only borders with no vertical lines.
- Number alignment: Right-align all number columns (quantities, prices, totals). Left-align text columns (product name, description). Center-align short text (status, type).
- Cell padding: Add 6–8px padding to all table cells. Without padding, text sits right against the cell border and becomes hard to read quickly.
Consistency across templates
If you have multiple templates — a proposal template, a contract template, an invoice template — they should all look like they came from the same company. Inconsistent branding across document types creates a disjointed customer experience.
The best approach is to build a base template first — a blank document with only the header, footer, page layout, and brand styles applied. Then use this base as the starting point for every specific document type by duplicating it and adding content sections. See managing multiple document templates for how to organize your template library efficiently.
When you update your logo or brand colors, you'll need to update each template individually. This is why keeping your template count low — using conditional logic to handle variations in fewer templates — reduces the maintenance burden significantly. See editing and updating existing templates.
Branding do's and don'ts
- Use your exact brand hex color codes
- Use a transparent PNG for your logo
- Set a fixed logo width in pixels
- Limit body text to one font
- Use color only in headers, table headers, and accents
- Add a confidentiality notice to every document
- Build a base template and duplicate it
- Test every template in print preview before publishing
- Use more than two fonts in one document
- Use a JPEG logo with a white background box
- Apply brand colors to body text paragraphs
- Use percentage-based image sizing
- Use pure black (#000000) for body text
- Leave the footer empty on multi-page documents
- Use different fonts across proposal and contract templates
- Skip the preview step before publishing
Frequently asked questions
Your templates are now branded and ready to make a strong impression on every customer they reach. Next steps: Create a contract template · Create a proposal template · Manage multiple templates
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