20 inspiring branding guides

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November 20, 2013
20 inspiring branding guides.

thumbnailOne of the most important things about creating a brand is making sure everything is cohesive. Once a brand pinpoints their values and how they’d like to be perceived, they have to make sure all their touchpoints refer back to these values.

What’s of extreme importance is the look of a brand. In order to make sure this stays fairly consistent, brands should have corporate identity guides or brand style guides. These typically go over the do’s and don’ts of using a logo and also shares the colors of the brand as well as other things.

Why are these important? Think of a world where the Target bullseye is purple; you’d be very confused. What if McDonald’s Golden Arches were even just a pale yellow? Brand style guides help to maintain a consistent look so that consumers and employees understand the brand. These guides help create uniformity and take a business from being just a company, to becoming a brand.

Today, we are going to show you some identity guides from the past and present that really show how important it is to be precise and clear and in your brand’s look. Many of these go over more than just the visuals and include the values of the brand. This is important because you’ll notice how many of them relate their values back to their logo and colors. Identity guides are truly important when brand building, so let’s jump right in and see some great examples.

United Way

united-way

Trapeze

trapeze

Parallels

parallels

It Starts in Parks

parks

NYC Food and Wine Festival

nyc-wine-and-food

Vidyo

vidyo

New York University

nyu

Argento

argento

Google Visual Assets Guidelines

Google Visual Assets Guidelines - Part 1 on Behance

University of Illinois 

uill

Hanes Corporation Brand Identity Manual

haynes

Swedish Armed Forces Brand Manual

swedish-army

Lloyd’s Brand Manual

lloyds

BAE Systems Brand Identity Manual

bae

Easy​.com

easy

Macmillian Cancer Support

macmillan

Channel 4 Identity Style Guide

channel4

Skype Brand Book

skype

Walmart Brand Guidelines

walmart

How important do you think it is to have a style guideline?

WDD Staff

WDD staff are proud to be able to bring you this daily blog about web design and development. If there’s something you think we should be talking about let us know @DesignerDepot.

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