Standards

In 2014, Pentagram designers Hamish Smyth and Jesse Reed launched their groundbreaking Kickstarter campaign to reissue the 1970s NYCTA Graphics Standards Manual as a hardcover book. It became an overnight sensation, and propelled a niche design community into the mainstream.

Since then, the team launched a successful independent publishing imprint, Standards Manual, reissued the style guides for NASA, the EPA, and DC Comics, and the NYCTA reprint (plus dozens more) and sold hundreds of thousands of copies just across these four titles alone. They’ve catapulted the indelible appeal of these understated graphic relics and their impact far beyond niche design communities—into the lifestyle, fashion, culture, and business spheres.

It’s from this legacy that the idea for Standards emerged.

For decades, designers have created and shared guidelines through PDFs. While a PDF gives a high degree of design control, the format no longer meets the evolving needs of modern brands that require functionality like video, downloadable assets, team collaboration, and a more dynamic updating experience.

Until now, the only way to build guidelines online—with the design control limited to the capabilities of a PDF—was to build a bespoke website. PDFs themselves once represented the groundbreaking innovation—disrupting decades of the final design deliverable being shared as a custom book or binder system.

Today, Standards offers an unparalleled way to build guidelines online with the level of precision and control we demand in our work, all in a simple online tool built for designers, by designers.

Good brands are good for business. In the design industry, brand guidelines are the most important, final deliverable for most branding projects that summarize all the decisions into a singular unified identity system, often defining the brand’s value.

When you consider the resources involved in large-scale rebrands, it’s puzzling that the tools to create the final client-facing output have not changed in more than 30 years.

When we first launched our idea for Standards in 2020, over 20,000 people signed up. There was clearly a desire for change. We surveyed thousands of design professionals and found that over 80% were using PDF guidelines, and many hadn’t considered online guidelines at all. Others had tried existing online guidelines tools, but were disappointed.

Informed by the evolving needs of today’s brand designers, and inspired by the pioneers before us, we work to ensure all brand guidelines built on Standards are both beautiful and practical. What began as a simple goal—to create better tools for designing and delivering brand guidelines—has led to a larger purpose. We want to empower our industry, and bring all brands into the future through accessible, contemporary design documentation.

By removing common pain points for brand designers, work becomes easier, and the output gets better. The result: modern, beautifully-crafted guidelines that showcase the unique personality of every brand, promoting consistency, recognition, and value worldwide.