

Design Guidelines: Why doesn't every site/company have this? - NIL8
http://www.stanford.edu/group/identity/ug_color.html

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Legion
I'm the lead web developer for a small design company with some _big_ clients.

Not only are guidelines like this common, but this isn't half as detailed as
some of the stuff we get handed.

Working in a company of designers is kind of funny sometimes. They'll think of
technological problems in those fuzzy, vague terms of non-techies, but once
the conversation becomes about "branding", out comes a razor-sharp eye for
detail.

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dcurtis
Here's the Skype Brand Book, which a complex version of the linked style
guide. All big companies have something similar to this, but Skype's is
particularly well done.

<http://blog.dustincurtis.com/the-skype-brand-book>

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apgwoz
Not only is it their style guide, it's got useful tips for non-designers who
have to play the role sometimes too!

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aaronbrethorst
The big ones all do. It's just not necessarily public information.

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whakojacko
...or followed as closely as it should be.

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halostatue
…or it could be in transition.

I'm still waiting to see the new branding book for the company I work at. I
thought the old branding sucked, but I was very pleased with the quality of
the branding book, and I'm "just" a dev (a back-end one at that).

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fuzzybassoon
Yale has this, and it's wonderful:

<http://www.yale.edu/printer/identity/index.html>

We also are working on a web style guide, designed by the same guy who wrote
the Web Style Guide:

<http://www.yale.edu/web/styleguide/index.html>

Both come in handy for removing a lot of the little decisions when working on
an affiliated design.

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pie
I have worked for a university and several organizations that have had basic
guidelines like this. It's much more important in large organizations when
many small departments or individuals are creating branded things.

One sees this basic type of thing in press kits and even (er, kinda) "link to
us" or "powered by" graphical widgets, but the focus on consistent color and
typography are things I think could stand to get some more attention. This
type of reference is especially helpful for non-designers who aren't
immediately inclined to think about consistency and branding.

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jfornear
I have worked for a university as well, and multiple logos I designed for the
small grant that I worked for were shot down for misusing the official logo
somehow. The review process seemed very politicized, subjective, and opaque.
It would have been nice to have detailed guidelines (See dcurtis' link) that
spelled everything out. I came away with, "your logo is round and so is our
official logo - this can't work, sorry."

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tobtoh
Most major companies have these sort of guidelines.

When I used to work at Ericsson, there was a huge manual with all the design
guidelines that specified everything from the exact shade of blue for the
Ericsson logo, the font, and to how far the 'three sausages' logo should be
spaced from the word 'Ericsson' (for the record, turn the 'E' horizontally and
place it between the 'n' and the logo, that's the correct spacing).

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mootothemax
I love reading design guides, but even more so the style guides that various
newspapers use. For example, here's the Guardian's style guide for words that
begin with the letter H:

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/styleguide/h>

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LarryRoth
Every company should have this. My day-to-day job is helping companies role
out their brand guidelines and we have seen the benefits of having guidelines
available. Putting aside the value of having a consistent brand, we have seen
big increases in productivity and employee satisfaction just because a). they
aren't starting from scratch each time and b). there are templates or assets
available to help them out. Add the ability for employees to share their work
and experience with each other and you can really get some work done.

Even if you are using vendors to help out with your design, it's a great way
to lower their time spent (and your bill) by more rapidly getting them up to
speed.

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bkbleikamp
I'll echo everyone else here that has said a lot of websites and companies do
have this.

But the reason not every one of them does is that it is extremely time
consuming, takes a lot of thought, and you have to spend time enforcing the
guidelines once they're created. If you're not committed to following them,
it's a waste of time and money to define them.

Most start ups are worried about things other than logos and colors matching
across multiple mediums (print, web, broadcast, etc.) because most web sites
and web start ups only have one medium: the browser.

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davidedicillo
Because they got they branding done at 99designs

People who always ask why you should pay hundreds or thousands for a corporate
identity should take a look of the amount of work behind those guidelines...

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dwwoelfel
My school, Texas A&M, also has this:

<http://brandguide.tamu.edu/>

They even have a page where you can download branded powerpoint slides, logos,
etc.

<http://brandguide.tamu.edu/bigPicture/downloads.html>

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Robin_Message
The Book of Redgate has some nice details about styling and logo usage.

<http://www.red-gate.com/careers/book_of_red_gate.htm> \-- Style guide is at
the end.

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thechangelog
Surprised at the order of their web font fallbacks: _"Arial, Helvetica" or
"Verdana, Arial, Helvetica"_

Verdana has much less in common with Helvetica than Arial does. It's also rare
to see a designer spec Arial before Helv.

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philfreo
Here's UF's:

<http://identity.ufl.edu/identityPlatform.pdf>

It even includes how logos on school trucks should appear, and letterhead
margin requirements

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racketman4
UI style guides are also helpful. Here's an example of Readernaut's:
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/sketch22/4044799031/sizes/o/>

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NIL8
I really like this.

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est
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_identity>

lots of schools have a VIS (visual identity system)

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DarrenMills
BGSU does -> <http://www.bgsu.edu/offices/mc/gsm/>

I have to use it all the time.

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faramarz
Could be that they have it internally. That was the case for my university.

But I agree, very useful for press/users/internal.

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joeld42
seriously good advice. And if you are not a huge company, just making a single
page with a list of colors and logos is a huge help and doesn't take more than
an hour to put together.

I am barely more than a hobbyist and I have a little one-page guide for my own
reference, mostly to sample colors easily.

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Aegean
The colors listed aren't that great, but I get the point.

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underdown
Who cares about color on a website unless it CONVERTS better? Style guides
only limit your ability to do that. Just my 2 cents.

~~~
samdk
Using a consistent color and style create a consistent look and feel for a
brand. That consistently becomes something people recognize, and that's a good
thing.

You can't measure everything with an A/B test.

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ugh
Well, you can, but organizations tend to not have the unlimited amounts of
money required to do that :)

