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A List of Branding Style Guides: Corporate, Academic and Government Brand Manual/Logo Guideline Examples

Posted by Jason on Fri, 02/19/2010 - 1:46am

We’re about to pitch the creation of a branding style guide to one of our clients. I was putting together an example list of style guides used by well-known companies, planning to include the list in our proposal. But it seemed smarter to expand it into a gigantic list and post it here, so we can reuse it — and you can benefit from it too.

First: What’s a branding style guide? It’s a document meant to ensure an organization’s members are all on the same page as far as official logos, logo usage, colors, fonts, stationery, images, and so on go. It’s good for any organization of any size to think about what messages its print and web materials convey, and then to make sure the whole team stays on message.

Second: Why look at a brand guide made for somebody else’s company? Besides our own reasons for making this list (SEE PARAGRAPH 1), you can learn a ton about branding, design, and identity by studying the materials that guide successful brands.

ONWARD.

A Short List

Just want to see five or so decent style guides, mostly made by organizations you’ve heard of?

The Long List

ABANDON ALL HOPE OF NOT SEEING BRANDING GUIDES, YE WHO KEEP READING. I went for variety and tried to limit the rest of this list just to organizations that most people have heard of. But it’s still the longest curated list of branding style guides on the entire internet… that I know of at least.

Corporate Branding Style Guides (US-based)

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Corporate Branding Style Guides (Non-US-based)

Academic Branding Style Guides

Note: To keep the list from getting absurd, I left out all sorts of perfectly good style guides. But for this category alone, I had to exclude many dozens and dozens. Institutions of higher learning: you people really brand your faces off.

Government Branding Style Guides

Group/Nonprofit/Open-source/ASSORTED Branding Style Guides

Sports Branding Style Guides

Content Management System Branding Style Guides

BONUS BRANDING!!! BRANDING BONUS!!!

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Lost in the Terrible UI Valley [Three Best Things 1/18/10 - 1/24/10]

Posted by Jason on Sun, 01/24/2010 - 8:42pm

Via Polaris Images

Because we love you

When it comes to Lost, I’m like a doorbuster sale… I have ZERO ZERO ZERO ZERO INTEREST!!! But this seems like a thing that took work to make and that you’d like.

Decade's Top 10 Creative End-of-Decade Top 10 Lists

Posted by Jason on Mon, 01/04/2010 - 12:02pm

Heads up, friends: This post is part of ENGINE’s decade-closing blogsplosion. Click here to witness the rest of the damage. The aughties!

Everybody’s seen 100,000 or so 10 Best Movies of the Decade lists by now. But how many Top 10 Superhero Deaths lists have you seen?

While building yesterday’s monster list of the worst-of-the-decade lists, I came across plenty of oddball lists that contribute mightily to the art and science of original listmaking. Here are 10 of the best and uniquest*.

* - Sorry.

The Shoddy Aughties: Best of the Decade's Worst Lists

Posted by Jason on Mon, 12/28/2009 - 4:52pm

Heads up, friends: This post is part of ENGINE’s decade-closing blogsplosion. Click here to witness the rest of the damage. The aughties!

It’s time for the exhaustive list of the Worst _____ of the Decade lists.

Y2KWe try to be positive. But come on. When Pew concludes it was the worst decade in 50 years, and Time drops the 10 Worst Things about the Worst Decade Ever, it’s hard to forget this decade kicked off with Y2K — not just a fail fail, but the biggest fail fail ever — and has only gotten more and more bailouty and wardrobe malfunctionous since.

Would love to list nice things; just filling a void here. Kottke’s already got the best lists list covered. It has some worsts too, but isn’t nearly as horrific as what you’re about to endure Also, Fimoculous has the 2009 list of lists up and running — perfect for those getting the shakes at staring down the barrel of all ten years at once.

Our next entry in our series will be as pleasant as can be. But it’s darkest before the dawn. Wade into the shock and awful.

Worst 2000s Lists

Worst Ads, Branding & Marketing


Via 10 Worst Green Brand Names by Fast Company

Worst Books, Magazines, & Newspapers


Via 30 Worst Women’s Magazine Covers by BuzzFeed

Worst in Business


Via 15 Biggest PR Disasters by Business Insider

Worst Cars


Via 10 Worst Cars by Jalopnik

Worst Celebrities


Via 10 Worst WWE Heavyweight Champions by Bleacher Report

Worst Computers & Web Stuff


Allegedly a website, via 10 Ugliest Websites by WXYZ.com

Worst Design


Via 12 Worst Web Design Trends by Web Hosting Help Guy

Worst Fashion


Via 10 Worst Hair Trends by the Frisky

Worst Food & Drink


Featured in 10 Worst Fast Food Meals by Time. Image via flickr

Worst … General


Featured in 11 Worst Ideas by the Washington Post

Worst in Money


Featured in 10 Worst Athletes to Ask for Financial Advice by Real Clear Sports

Worst Movies & Theater


Via 10 Worst Hindi Movies by Greatbong

Worst Music


Via 25 Worst Album Covers (NSFW) by Gunaxin Media [Somehow, the nuclear reactors make less sense than the pigs that are immune to pig flu.]

Worst in Politics


Via 12 Most Shocking Sex Scandals by the Huffington Post

Worst Products


Via 10 Worst Tech Products by CNET

Worst Science & Tech


Featured in 10 Worst Moments in Science by Smithsonian Magazine

Worst in Sports


Via The Decade’s Worst NASCAR Paint Schemes by Fanhouse

Worst TV


Featured in 10 Worst TV Shows by Complex

Worst Videogames


Via 10 Worst Games by GameWad

That’s it! You survived the worst decade since the 1360s.

That wasn’t so bad after all!

Got more? Send them my way.

Three Best Things 9/7/09 - 9/13/09: "I Forgot To Remember To Forget"

Posted by Jason on Sun, 09/13/2009 - 3:21pm
  • Remembering the Beatles: Chuck Klosterman plays really dumb-smart, breaking down the remastered box set released this week by some “Liverpool pop group, a 1960s band so obscure that their music is not even available on iTunes.” With the remasters plus Beatles Rock Band, this week felt like a tiny Beatlemania. It was fantastic. While we’re remembering, here’s an idea: Annual Beatles Day.
  • Remembering 9/11: branding the 9/11 Memorial. More critically, remembering 9/10.
  • Remembering one of the greatest humans of all time. No, not Billy Mays. Norman Borlaug, the agricultural scientist whose contributions have saved literally hundreds of millions of lives so far, died at 95.

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