Branding and design has changed significantly in the last two decades, but the tools 
to design guidelines are either stuck in the past, or never existed at all.

Our own research shows that most designers still deliver guidelines in PDF format, and the reason is clear: design control. Until now, there has not been an online guidelines tool that allows for the design control we demand.

Standards is purpose-built tool for designing brand guidelines online, published as a live website that can be updated instantly, shared, and evolve with brands over time.

Rich guidelines with video, download, links, and more, can all created with a level of design control that allows you to express the brand design to its full extent, untethered from templates.

Precision and control. We tried other guidelines and website builders, but they didn’t provide the control, customization, and precision we demanded. Others lock you into a template or structure that doesn’t allow for full brand expression.

We needed a modern tool that output highly custom, pixel-perfect documents that were easy to update and share with our clients. What started as an internal tool became Standards, built for us all.

Building guidelines with Standards gives you the control to design a bespoke website without code, developers, or the stress and time involved with a custom website. Standards also offers a faster and more cost effective solution, 100% tailored for brand designers and teams to create guidelines.

Unlike template-based website or guidelines builders, Standards is a full-fledged design tool, made by and for designers. We’ve taken great care to make Standards as intuitive as possible and are constantly iterating and improving the editing experience, as well as adding features.

Like any design tool, there is a learning curve. Send us an email at support@standards.site if you have any questions or would like to schedule a one-on-one training session or demo.

Standards is used by freelancers, design studios, in-house designers, brand teams, marketers, or anyone who wants to compile, organize, and share guidelines or other web-based documents (you may have noticed, but Standards is pretty handy for creating websites, too).

With the ability to create an unlimited number of guidelines, Standards complements the workflows of both design studios creating work for various clients, and in-house/brand teams publishing projects for different departments within an organization.

Both of our plans, Free and Professional, give you the ability to create unlimited draft projects.

The Free plan gives access to the full Standards application, but restricts publishing and collaboration features. If you’re starting out or evaluating Standards for your workflow, the Free plan is a great place to start until you’re ready to publish.

The Professional plan allows you to publish an unlimited amount of guidelines, and add collaborative features like Connected Workspaces. See the Compare table above for a comparison.

Unlike other guidelines tools online, our Professional plan doesn’t limit you on the number of guidelines you create or publish, or make you upgrade to a higher priced tier to unlock more published guidelines.

Free Plans come with 1 GB cloud storage, and Professional Plans start with 20 GB cloud storage.

Higher storage limits will be available in the future as add-ons. In the meantime, please contact support@standards.site if you are near your storage limit.

When your project is finished you can publish it. Publishing creates a website and link that can be shared publicly, or privately with a password. You can publish changes to your project at any time, and the web link will always be up to date.

Nope! Once a guidelines is published, there is no limit on page views for the web link. If published as a public project, viewers can openly access the site without an account or credentials.

Yes, you can add an unlimited number of custom domains with our Professional plan. (Custom domains can be added on the Free plan, but you aren’t able to publish them.)

Once you have purchased or linked domains you own, we provide clear and simple instructions for adding your domains and linking them to your guidelines on Standards.

Alternatively, you can publish projects on the Standards domain for free with a Professional plan. When published, the URL will would be structured as: live.standards.site/myguidelinesname

Yes. Sometimes your client might want you to hand off a project completely. You can transfer projects to any other account that have a Professional plan. During the transfer process, you can choose to keep a copy.

Alternatively, if your client (or viewer) only needs to view the published guidelines, you can retain control of the project in your account. With unlimited guidelines, there is no extra cost to retain ownership.

On tablet and mobile devices, sites published with Standards currently display a scaled desktop version of the site. The full functionality of the site is maintained, including links/downloads.  Depending on the design of the site, some element may appear smaller than desired. We recommend testing your site on multiple devices after publishing and edit any elements that may not have scaled.

We currently support responsive typography scaling (on by default), and we are actively working on adding more tablet/mobile design options and support in the near future.

Standards minimizes possible vulnerabilities by following industry best practices and leveraging third-party providers. We use Google Cloud services which are ISO/IEC 27001 compliant, and we do not manage any physical servers or virtual machines. We use the built-in security tools Google provides to grant or restrict access to files and user data. We do not transport or store authentication credentials or billing information, as those are sent to Google and Stripe directly.

We’re always eager to hear from current and potential customers. To suggest a feature or chat about your needs, please contact hi@standards.site

While you can store up to 20 GB of files and link to files and URLs using Standards, it isn’t designed to be a total Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution.

However, Standards can work in conjunction with DAM software if it’s already used by your organization. Linking to any type of file repository is easy, meaning Standards can act as a brand hub that links out to various resources for your brand (such as Dropbox folders, DAM repositories, Figma libraries, etc.)

With 20 GB cloud storage on Professional plans, many of the features required form a DAM can be met by Standards.

For general inquiries, email hi@standards.site

For support or technical issues, email support@standards.site, or join the Standards Slack

Independently designed and developed in the U.S., Standards is born out of the publishing imprint Standards Manual, Brooklyn design office Order, and Seattle design and technology agency Shore.

Yes! To speak with one of our founders about a demo, please contact hi@standards.site