full identity systems
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- gabe
does anyone have any examples of well designed full identity systems—possibly even brand guidelines? my search hasn't turned up much in the way of useful results.
i'm delving into unfamiliar territory and would love some inspiration. obviously there are tons of blogs featuring logos, business cards, etc. but i was hoping to find something a bit more encompassing of everything shown in unison (hence the call for full identity systems)
- gabe0
that second link rocks! thanks typist
- vsplus0
this might help you.
http://www.qbn.com/topics/587891…
- gramme0
I've done several of them, two that covered pretty much everything. One was for Formica, and the other for my local church.
- mydo0
www.experimentaljetset.nl has a 14mb ID manual you can download for one of thier projects. though is the a lot of the same stuff if different langauges and editions it's still pretty interesting.
PDF here.. http://www.experimentaljetset.nl…
- crnatrava0
style guides:
http://www.ci-portal.de/index.ph…
- gramme0
^ Interesting to hear Exp. Jetset's frustration put into writing, and through a non-enforceable style guide no less. I would've thought a simple letter to the culprits would be enough, but I understand where they're coming from.
I felt that way when I saw the graphic manual for Formica after it went live. I'd spent over 1.5 years working intermittently on the project (sometimes feverishly for several days straight, at all hours of the day and night). We specifically designed the manual in a horizontal format that would be screen-friendly. It started out as a two-page overview, and turned into a 70-some odd page book. Not a major problem, but as I recall we ended up moving through about 24 versions before it was declared finished, or dead depending on one's perspective.
Working under the direction of my boss, I designed over 20 product logotypes. Everything else too: stationery, presentation templates (I've since sworn off PowerPoint), email templates, building signage and truck livery; t-shirts, mugs, etc. The product logotypes had to be re-done at least three times due to disagreements about nomenclature, largely affected by a brand-new legal department half-way through the project.
The horrible decision was made to house the piece in one of those proprietary page-turning e-zine sites I've come to loathe. Some of you know what I'm talking about. Cumbersome, slow to load, takes forever to download and print even a single page. Text and images in those sites renders terribly (not just in the specific brand we used). Also, before leaving my former job, I had specifically asked the site developers to NOT use the spreads option which was their default viewing scenario. Looking at the style guide in spreads made it totally illegible. It would've been only a marginal catastrophe if they'd built the site in single pages as I intended, but I think after I left some things fell through the cracks, and my instructions were forgotten or ignored. I only found out all this after stumbling across the style guide site a few months ago.
So: we spent all that time writing, designing, rewriting, redesigning, navigating bureaucratic landmines, weathering an international buyout, and somehow managed to finish the project—but now you can't even read the damned thing. All that back and forth, all that building and rebuilding for n o t h i n g .
I didn't realize I was still so pissed about that project.
- so it wasn't printed ten million times? That's very good for the environment.Pupsipu
- It was never supposed to be printed. It was merely supposed to be produced correctly.gramme
- i.e., online.gramme
- i feel much less stressed about everything after reading your post. thank you.mydo
- agency life.. makes you slowly cynical about life.janne76
- thsnks for share...many of us in the same way–!miesvan
- gramme0
Oh and the same exact thing happened to a 100-page catalog I spent roughly the same amount of time working on.
- gabe0
thanks guys!
- ayport0
This is such a great thread, glad to have found this one.