Styleguides: what are they? Put simply, their a how-to guide for keeping all marketing efforts “on-brand”. What is “on-brand” exactly? Well, it’s making sure your “brand” (i.e. the pieces of your companies image that make people feel a certain way) stay true and don’t become diluted through poor design and misuse.
Brand styleguides can be short and sweet, or they can be 100+ page behemoths that dictate just about every possible move you decide, from tone-of-voice to spacing on letterheads.
You might ask yourself: “why do I want to look at a bunch of other companies styleguides?” Well, for one, you might find something useful in your own styleguides. It’s also good for research purposes, and helps shed light on a company and why they may choose to a certain thing. A useful feature for me is uncovering what types of font families a company might use. This gives your in-depth information than say, uploading an image to www.whatdafont.com.
I found a nifty way to scour for stlyeguides across the web, using googles filetype: parameter.
Here are few interesting finds I discovered:
http://www.webex.com/pdf/WebEx_Style_Guide.pdf
Pretty extensive styleguide from Webex, the web conferencing software. Lots of different points covered, definitely a well thought out guide!
http://marketing.mountainhardwear.com/pdfs/MHI-BrandGuide.pdf
Pretty nifty little guide by the makers of kickass and durable outdoor wear and gear.
A kickass little styleguide from the gamer channel, G4TV.
http://www.seomoz.org/SEOmoz-Brand-Guide.pdf
Another cool styleguide from the talented folks at SEOmoz, a local Seattle based SEO company! On another note, check out www.seomoz.org, they’ve got some pretty killer tools for SEO goodness. Their guide even covers appropriate usage of the “mozbot”. Cool!
http://www.ctunitedway.org/Media/logos/BrandGuide_v5.pdf
Support organization United Way has a pretty nice and extensive styleguide too.
http://www.business-services.upenn.edu/publicationservices/pdf/logostyleguide.pdf
This one is pretty extensive. I have found in my research that college styleguides tend to be very long and very specific. This one is no exception.
http://www.cerwinvega.com/pdf/branding_guide_cv.pdf
A very “short and sweet” styleguide for Cerwin-Vega.
http://www.udel.edu/daretobefirst/digital/UD_IdentityGuide_web2__.pdf
What did I say? College styleguides are LONG!
http://www.wi-fi.org/files/WFA_Brand_StyleGuide_May2007.pdf
Didn’t know that the Wi-Fi Alliance had a styleguide did you? This one is great, it covers all the various “badges” for the Wi-Fi Alliance.
http://www.bus.emory.edu/pdf/GBS_StyleGuide_07_11_07.pdf
STILL don’t believe me? Another college styleguide, very long. Another feature of college styleguides are the usage of glossaries and college-specific terminology.
http://identity.berkeley.edu/guidelines/berkeley-graphic-style-09.pdf
The prestigious Berkeley and their styleguide. Very clean and beautiful.
http://www.meetminneapolis.com/MeetMpls_StyleGuideweb.pdf
Even tourist efforts for Minneapolis have a brand styleguide!
http://www.flyingfish.de/identity/CD-manual.pdf
Not sure who InterEthica is, but they definitely have a very clean and polished styleguide.
http://nawbo.org/imageuploads/STYLEGUIDE2009.pdf
The National Association of Woman Business Owners (mouthful!) has got some pretty cool logo variations.
I would definitely like to see what other cool styleguides exist out there.
UPDATE: I found this amazingly well categorized and extensive list of styleguides as well, created by Jason Kirk of Engine Industries. Go check it out!