The term design language has a lot of facets to it. One of those facets is the goal of creating visually recognizable branding. When first exposed to the brand, viewers should start to build a simple schema of it without outside guidance – no one should have to explicitly give viewers directions on how to recognize your brand. An organization should be able to pour effort into building a brand to present to the public, knowing when you present brand elements to people, that they recognize it.
When observing the visual patterns of any large brand, you can often get a gist of what their guidelines are. But to rigorously maintain a brand, very often, standards are published and enforced, defining the visual brand and rules for how to apply it. This can also include rules that prohibit its use in certain contexts – e.g., “Either show the logo or the name in a graphic, but never both.” The collection of rules and guidelines that define how your brand should look are often called the Visual Identity System.
Sometimes they’re publicly available:
- Sometimes it’s public so third-parties can be given instructions on how to use their brand.
- Sometimes it’s public because that’s the easiest way for an organization to disseminate the information if it’s not sensitive information.
- Sometimes it’s public for posterity reasons.
Marketing Technology
Before going through the list of examples, I want to suggest that when analyzing these guidelines, remember to look at them as a technology. I feel it helps add perspective.
Technology is simply being able to exploit any advantage that comes from organization and consistency.
- Using two rocks to chip one into a blade is a technology.
- Gluing the sides of a stack of paper to form the spine of a book is a technology.
- Doping silicon and organizing it into large arrays of logic gates is a technology (some often see this as THE use of the word “technology,” but it’s only A technology).
- Creating a set of rules to ensure your brand has a consistent look and emotional response is a technology.
Misc Prerequisite Rambling
I got the links for all these documents from Google, and there’s more out there. I’ve added some thoughts and musings on the documents and the brands in general, but the documents pretty much speak for themselves. Also, I’m no practitioner or expert in branding (I think this website is proof of that), but boy, do I like specs and looking at technical things. And visual identity language specs are both those things in large picture-book form—something for both the kid and adult in me to enjoy looking at.
NASA
NASA has an old Graphics Standards Manual published around 1975/1976.
It’s also recently been republished. For anyone interested in owning a physical copy, that old document has been touched-and-cleaned-up and printed by StandardsManual.com.
StandrardsManual.com originally started as a Kickstarter campaign to republish that manual. I even bought the manual from that original campaign. They’re nice manuals, great stuff for coffee tables. Since then, they’ve become a company that also sells other public design standard manuals.
Something to note is that those standards were made before the information age with consumer computers and the internet. For more contemporary guidelines, NASA has a document called the NASA Style Guide. What I find interesting about the NASA Style Guide is its omittance of the guidelines for the Worm logo. A Ctrl+F search shows it’s only mentioned once – and only to say how it’s retired. Yet, it’s arguable if that’s what’s actually happened in practice.
Sometimes it’s hard to fight being outdated when even obsolescence can become obsolete.
When analyzing visual design standards, NASA is unique because its logos go on a lot more than websites and documents. The standards also need to consider branding between its different centers, historical heritage, space vehicles, logistic vehicles, brand-borrowing for subcontractors to use, etc. NASA is also a governing body for civilian space travel and a public-education-and-outreach arm of the United States – and even (public outreach for) the world, which can involve soft power branding between the US and the rest of the world.
To complicate matters more, NASA is a government organization that generates a lot of freely available media or even public domain content. It’s simpler for private organizations because they have clear-cut ownership of their content and brand. While their media is mostly free to use, the brand and use of its logo and implied endorsements are protected.
The bottom line, a LOT goes into the NASA brand.
DOW
DOW has a Visual Identity System document online. The document’s title says it is a summary, implying there is a larger design spec document.
That document is dated 2018. There’s also a 2014 version that’s half as long and a document specifically for how to apply their logo.
The document covers color palettes and fonts in great detail. In a very practice what you preach mentality, it follows its own guidelines throughout itself. That has a meta quality to it. I approve.
DOW is a chemical company. These industrial businesses often have to deal with a public perception of being a cold and hard industry. I can only speculate the effort required for public affairs and public opinion campaigns to counter those perceptions. This shows in the language they use across the document, and the imagery they explicitly recommend users of the brand should invoke to others. For example, see page 24 of their VIS, titled “Situational Imagery,” – as well as page 39, titled “Expressing the Brand.”
For example, on public opinion campaigns: ever watch an ad [e.g., Boeing ad] (sometimes even an expensive Super Bowl ad) about a company and afterward ask yourself, “wait, exactly what product did they spend those massive ad costs trying to sell me?” The answer is themselves. It’s initially an abstract concept to understand, but there you go.
Toyota
Toyota has a dedicated website for their visual brand. Holy cow, the production value for this site is through the roof! It reads like a print magazine: large cinematic photos, interactive elements to switch between examples. If anyone ever wanted to break down their branding as its own form of advertisement – this would be a poster child example. When you look at it, it’s obvious they meant for the page to be viewed on mobile devices, but it still looks good on desktop browsers. My guess is that this website is for the various franchise owners – so its production value might also serve as an ad for franchising?
My only complaint is that the pages are designed to take up the entire width of the browser. I use ultrawide screens – so the layout sometimes gets a little too extreme.[e.g.]
The entire website screams, “I cost money to make! I require a team to maintain!” On the page for their typography, they have an inspirational promo video about their font types; it’s got BenSound(ish) music, high-end motion graphics, the whole works. You’d swear Toyota was an American-based company by the sheer excess of this website.
From this praise, I’m not saying that anyone else should do it this way – or that this level of effort is needed for just capturing the visual specs of a brand. But, it’s an experience for sure.
There is also a Dynamic Branding document that goes into detail on logo construction.
On a tangent from visual identity, it also has music notation for a branded melody!
Apple
Apple has a document called Apple Identity Guidelines.
There are also other past and abridged regional versions if anyone is interested in comparing the difference and doing some archeology.
Apple is a consumer computer designer/manufacturer, as well as a software company. They also need to worry about brand cohesiveness between their physical stores, iTunes Store, resellers, and applications. These visual identity documents linked are primarily concerned about how their storefronts and ads look and operate. Specifically, it’s a guide for resellers and affiliates – stores that sell Apple products that aren’t an Apple subsidiary.
Out of all the companies in the world, Apple is arguably the company that has elevated branding to its highest form. You may not be a fan of Apple; you might be even a (proud) hater; you could argue the brand is pretentious at times. But, all those opinions are different from the objective observations of how powerfully they’ve wielded the brand they’ve developed.
What Makes Up The Spec?
Something to note is that these various documents actually have different purposes and goals. NASA is a publicly funded government organization, while the others are private competitive corporations. The Toyota website is primarily concerned with marketing and advertisement. The Dow document is more concerned about general identity.
So what does a visual design system have? What common between these examples, or any VIS in general?
- Rules For Logo Use
- When anyone thinks of branding, this is the second most crucial part of a brand, right after the brand name. What does the logo look like? How big should it be? Is there a process to reconstruct it? Etc.
- Rules For Background, Colors, And Typefaces
- A lot of the organizations listed use their own specialized font type. I doubt just any organization can spend the resources to have a font they can call their own. The NASA worm and meatball have distinct typefaces, Toyota has Toyota Type, Dow has Dow Corporate. On the other hand, Apple uses a modified version of Garamond, a font ubiquitous enough that it’s preinstalled for Windows.
The fonts for their logos are often so baroque and unique that they’re usually not used for their standard texts. In those situations, another more-basic font is chosen.
- A lot of the organizations listed use their own specialized font type. I doubt just any organization can spend the resources to have a font they can call their own. The NASA worm and meatball have distinct typefaces, Toyota has Toyota Type, Dow has Dow Corporate. On the other hand, Apple uses a modified version of Garamond, a font ubiquitous enough that it’s preinstalled for Windows.
- Size, Dimensions, Layouts
- The rules for print ads, documents, stationery, signage, etc.
- Inappropriate Uses
- What are bad examples of your brand’s use? When are certain design decisions prohibited, and alternative designs should be used instead?
- Materials
- Very often, a brand will transcend printed paper and screens. It will be put on textiles, staff uniforms, vehicles, rockets, etc. We’re not talking about just logos and text, but other elements of branding, including the colors of a brand.
Sometimes the color of the (physical) material becomes relevant. Sometimes how printable your logo is in a given type of material becomes relevant. Sometimes people want to emboss or CNC mill your logo onto a surface instead of printing it. If it’s a big enough factor in your brand’s context, rules get made, and the issue of physical materials gets addressed.
- Very often, a brand will transcend printed paper and screens. It will be put on textiles, staff uniforms, vehicles, rockets, etc. We’re not talking about just logos and text, but other elements of branding, including the colors of a brand.
- Leeway and Alternatives
- How strict should these rules be followed? What are the special exceptions and the fallbacks? Contingencies?
- Decentralized
- This isn’t a feature that’s explicitly acknowledged. These documents can be designed so that a central authority doesn’t need to babysit every decision made on the usage of a brand at every step of the way. Instead, various people can be handed the design specs and work on their own.
– Stay strong, code on. William Leu.