Guidelines And Standards Manuals

The word 'Guidelines' is in fashion, but implies flexibility. I prefer 'Standards.' The appearance and exposure of the corporate brand must be constant. In even the most entrepreneurial corporate culture where "all permissions are granted unless expressly denied," identity must be the great exception, in which all permissions are denied unless expressly granted. Otherwise, chaos will rule.

Edward Tufte says this well: "If there is a well thought-out design standard, it should be followed. In practice, great design comes from great designers. That is empirically the case. If a great designer did a first-rate standard, that model should be followed. Great design is not democratic; it comes from great designers. If the standard is lousy, then develop another standard." www.edwardtufte.com

Until 2000 or so, the best manuals were beautifully designed books, expensively produced to support their quality message and policy importance. Today, print is more often used for a beautiful "voice" brochure that promotes the corporate brand's visual impact to its employees while the heavy lifting, the nitty-gritty details and application templates, are on a web site. This solves the problems of aging manuals, their high cost and their rapidly declining respect and observance.

Some manuals are at least partly 'open' on the Web, and I will add well-designed examples below as I (or you) find them. For a longer list, see Hans Stol's "Catalogue" page.  Brands of the World also offers a long list of brand manual PDFs.

[Thanks to teacher Paulo Granato (e-mail) in Brazil for suggesting this page, and to URL contributors such as Hans Stol, Piotr Sierzega, Johnny Hood and Design Maven Frank Briggs.]

Note:  Jerry Kuyper's eight rules for effective manuals (at bottom of this page)

ABB	-	Excellent. Includes templates, best practices
Accelrys	-	all on one (long) page
Air Products	-	airproducts.com/identity	detailed PDFs
Akzo Nobel	-	akzonobel.com/company/identity
Alberta (Canada province)	-	corporateidentity.gov.ab.ca
Alzheimer's Society	-	21-page pdf - thorough and to the point
American Heart Association	-	p0st.americanheart.org/branding
Amsterdam	-	stijlweb.amsterdam.nl	The city (in Dutch)
AT&T	-	att.com/brand	A CoreBrand-built site
Best Western	-	Global version of the hotel brand's standards; 13 PDF chapters
Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC	-	bcbsnc.com/inside/style-guide	The basics
Brasil Telecom	-	Brasil Telecom	PDF
Cambridge University	-	Appropriately conservative guidelines
Canada	-	Managing a nation brand
CapGemini etc	-	capgemeni.com/visualidentity
Cargill	-	cargillbrandidentity.com
Chordiant	-	chordiant.com/news/download/Styleguide	Software; 9-page PDF
Cunard	-	cunardguidelines.com
Dow	-	dow.com/about/corpid/corpid	PDFs
DSM	-	identity.dsm.com	Dutch, chemicals
European Union 'visibility'	-	europa.eu.int/comm/europeaid/visibility	Brand imposition!
FedEx	-	fedexidentity.com/guidelines/FedEx_Guidelines	"Short manual" PDF
GE	-	ge.com/brand	Brilliant;  no longer open!
Handspring	-	handspring.com	PDF only
Heathrow	-	heathrowexpress.com
Hong Kong	-	brandhk.gov.hk/brandhk/guidelines	PDFs
Ibsen 2006	-	An Event Identity manual; the logo celebrates the playwright's centennial
Knight Frank	-	knightfrankglobal	UK realtors
LG Group	-	lg.co.kr/english/about/ci	the chaibol
Lilly	-	branding.lilly.com	comprehensive
MIT  Mass. Inst. of Technol.	-	The "best of show" brand site... driving ideas, history, team, plus guidelines
MacMillan Cancer Support	-	The best "be the brand" site I have yet seen
MasterCard	-	mastercardbrandcenter.com	mostly for merchants
Mesta	-	Norway's road builders; good brand and manual	But in Norwegian only
Mosaic	-	By Franke+Fiorella, as was Cargill
NASA	-	hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/insignia	How not to do it (logo, guidelines)
Neilsen Company, The	-	Brief (ten page) and basic Guidelines pdf
NortelNetworks	-	nortelnetworks.com/corporate	Very helpful
Norway	-	The nation's brand manual
Novell	-	novell/com/brandguide
Novozymes	-	novozymes.com/cvi
New York Public Library	-	nypl.org/styleguide	Web guide for libraries
Portugal Telecom (PT)	-	Good review of basic standards (in Portugese) plus a PDF manual
Princeton University Press	-	Elegant work from Chermayeff & Geismar, 2007
Raytheon	-	raytheon.com/identity/	Many templates
Rentokil Initial	-	Business services giant with dual brands
Reuters	-	Print, Interactive, Broadcast & Display sections
Schott	-	schott.com/designmanual	Thorough
Seagate	-	seagate.com/branding	24 page PDF
Seventh-Day Adventist Church	-	adventist.org/logokit	username=logo password=kit
SF Airport	-	flysfo.com/brand
Smithsonian	-	si.edu/silogo	America's museum
St. Paul Travelers	-	stpaultravelers.com/brand_identity
Sun	-	sun.com/smrc/branding
Telstra	-	telstra.com.au/brand	Australian telco
The New School	-	newschool.edu/pdf/VisualIDGuide	Beautiful system
University College Dublin	-	ucd.ie/visualidentity  Note the brand research	Ireland's biggest
Univ. of Alberta	-	creative.ualberta.ca/visualidentity	a Canadian university
UPS	-	UPS_mediaguide (Zip of PDF)	Media guidelines only
U.S. Air Force	-	2000 rebranding by Siegel+Gale; see our review
U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security	-	enter or paste www.cgaux.info /G_OCX/publications/misc/DHS- Basic-Guide-Brand&Seal.pdf Plus this PDF Vehicles manual	Bureaucrats care, too Humvees, copters etc.; pretty cool
Washington State	-	wsu.edu/identity	a US state university
Wiley	-	wiley.com	Publisher brand
Yale University	-	How Yale does it. Also see their page on typography, by Matthew Carter
YWCA usa	-	ywcabrand.org	username ywcausa password ourbrand
Yukon Territory	-	Simple logo, photography and advertising standards

The experienced designer Jerry Kuyper adds these thoughts on "a few qualities I try to achieve in identity standards:"