A List of Branding Style Guides: Corporate, Academic and Government Brand Manual/Logo Guideline Examples
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 2010 Census
- Clemson University: Very thorough, but includes lots of rationale in normal-human-speak.
- Corsair Memory
- Heineken
- Kansas City Barbecue Society: You don’t have to be an intergalactic corporation to make sure your group’s voice is consistent.
- MapQuest: Super simple. See if you can memorize it!
- Seventh-Day Adventist Church: Branding is all about telling a story.
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)
- 3M
- Adobe InDesign CS3
- Alltel
- Android
- Apple’s Mac and QuickTime
- Best Western
- Carquest
- Cisco
- Compaq
- eBay
- GE
- GoDaddy.com
- Intel
- Jacuzzi
- Jiffy Lube
- MasterCard
- McDonalds
- Microsoft
- Motorola
- Netflix
- New Era
- Nielsen
- Nike Golf
- Organic Valley
- Palm
- Real.com
- Second Life
- Skype
- Sun Microsystems
- Tickets.com
- TimeWarner
- Tivo
- Travelers Insurance
- Tyson Foods
- USA Today
- Vonage
- The Weather Channel
Subscribe to the ENGINE Blog, run by ENGINE Industries.
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.
- Arizona State University [Largest document I’ve ever seen]
- Auburn University
- Baylor University
- Boston University
- Cornell University
- Emory University
- Georgia Tech
- Liberty University
- Kansas University
- Kennesaw State University
- MIT
- National University of Singapore
- NC State University
- The New School
- Notre Dame
- Oklahoma Baptist University
- The Ohio State University
- Oregon State University
- Princeton University Press
- Spelman College
- Texas A&M University
- UCLA
- University of Alberta
- University of Arkansas
- University of Cambridge
- University of Cincinnati
- University of Florida
- university of Georgia
- University of Kentucky
- University of Illinois
- University of Maine
- University of Massachusetts Boston
- University of Memphis
- University of Michigan
- University of Minnesota
- University of Missouri
- University of Nebraska
- University of Ottawa
- University of Oxford
- University of Pennsylvania
- University of San Diego
- University of Tennessee
- University of Utah
- Virginia Tech
- Yale University
Government Branding Style Guides
- Alberta, Canada
- Armed Forces Entertainment
- Australia Day
- Belfast Zoo
- Connecticut
- Detroit, Michigan
- EnergyStar
- Georgia Customer Service [“Customer”! LOL!]
- Hong Kong
- HUD (US Department of Housing and Urban Development)
- Minneapolis, Minnesota
- NASA and Apollo 40th Anniversary
- National Health Service (UK)
- New York Civil Service
- Oregon
- Recovery.gov
- San Francisco International Airport
- Smithsonian Institution
- South Africa
- Toledo, Ohio
- Tourism Ireland
- Tourism Yukon
- USAid
- Vermont
- Visit Britain
Group/Nonprofit/Open-source/ASSORTED Branding Style Guides
- Alzheimer’s Society
- American Heart Association
- American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
- Audobon Nature Institute
- Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina
- Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
- Java
- Learning and Teaching Scotland
- Medical Research Council (UK)
- Mozilla Firefox
- MySQL
- Power Architecture
- Realtors Commercial Alliance
- Wi-Fi Alliance
- Wikimedia Foundation
- World Wide Web Consortium
Sports Branding Style Guides
- Australian Sports Commission
- Beijin 2008 Summer Olympics
- Canada Games
- FEI World Cup
- FIFA
- Horizon League
- NCAA Division II
- PokerStars
- Special Olympics
- USA Cycling
- USA Hockey’s Hockey Weekend
- USA Swimming
- Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
Content Management System Branding Style Guides
BONUS BRANDING!!! BRANDING BONUS!!!
- How you may and may not use Verizon’s “Can you hear me now? Good!” Guy.
- How MetLife adapts its brand for Hong Kong
Subscribe to the ENGINE Blog, run by ENGINE Industries.
Printer-friendly version
Email to a friendAddToAny
Similar
- 3BT: All-Video Edition [Three Best Things 3/22/10 - 3/28/10]
- American Museum of Natural History Hires ENGINE for Multiple Projects
- Atlanta Artist Shanda McCloskey's New Website
- The University of Washington's Latest Drupal Project, Assisted by ENGINE
- Joomla!-to-WordPress Conversion for Commonwealth Church Finance: Complete
Look at this testimonial:
Great work. I love the content, simple, short and accurate.
– David Vis
Owner
FOG Free Technologies
Click to view more about this project.
Subscribe to the ENGINE Blog
Hi! Click right here to subscribe via RSS to the ENGINE Blog.
It’s the rare small-company blog good enough to be shared by big-time publications like the Wall Street Journal, Slate, the Consumerist, and Kottke (not to mention tweeted by Drupal).
Or subscribe by email below!
Comments
Wow… how long it took to
Wow… how long it took to gather this list?
Pingback
Brand Manuals & Guide Template
Hi nice refference, thank you for sharing. I got an idea from your article to create a brand manuals and guides tempalete, here you can see… Link
Regards,
www.afahmy.com
Pingback
Pingback
Good
Wow, Thank you for sharing! You’re very helpful
Pingback
It was time to fly to Mars!
Dutch non-profit organization Mars One gathered to be the first who will be able to move humanity to Mars and build a civilization. According to the schedule , this event is going to happen in 2023 , simply put on a pair rejuvenate faster than the other participants of the ” Martian Race” - the U.S., China and Russia .
Who thinks about this? # notraty
Post new comment