In the last few years, there's been an enthusiastic revival of old-school brand guidelines; for example, the popular reboots of the NASA and New York City Transit Authority standards manuals, both thanks to Jesse Reed and Hamish Smyth. I'm a design librarian and archivist with Letterform Archive, and it’s exciting to see this revival translate into increased interest in the Archive's deep collection of old three-ring binders full of program assets for some of the most recognizable brands, such as Coca-Cola, Nike, and Apple
In large part, our identity manuals collection came to us as a generous donation from Professor Dennis Y. Ichiyama. We are home to more than 300 standards manuals that he collected from the 1960s to the 1990s while teaching visual communication. (He’s currently an instructor in the Art & Design department at Purdue University.) For forty years, he asked companies, nonprofits, and government agencies for their brand guidelines for his students to use as reference. Black & Decker gave him an entire class set from which he’d assign projects. They were an important tool in teaching his students how to work within constraints — a crucial skill for young designers to master.
Keeping with that spirit, these binders are available to our visitors and often requested by design students and professionals interested in visually communicating as a brand and in what makes a system cohesive. However, my favorite thing about these manuals is that they are sneaky vessels of inspiration. They teach users all the rules, so they can understand how to break them the right way. Here are some of my favorite ways to get inspired by guidelines.