The best way to learn about style guides is to copy what others are doing and make it your own. For this post I’ve scoured the web to find some beautiful examples of corporate brand style guides.

For those of you who don’t know: a style guide outlines your brand ID. The colors, layout, tone, use case examples — the personality and execution of the brand. This is so other designers and can easily interrupt the look and feel of a brand and continue the brand strategy in a cohesive manner.

1. Mash Creative: ICON – Royal Mail Rethink (above)

Mash Creative were commissioned by ICON magazine to ‘Rethink’ the Royal Mail identity as part of the magazines ongoing feature.

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2. Bourne Branding by Greig Anderson

An identity based on an original font designed in 1760 by renowned Scottish type founder Alexander Wilson. The type was redrawn and tweaked to add some contemporary features referencing this modern digital agency. They also completed a full brand usage guideline, stationery and studio signage.

3. Post Projects: Revolver Coffee

Revolver Coffee is a café located in Vancouver BC in Gastown. Revolver serves up espresso and made to order brewed coffee.

4. Purpose: Design Council Refresh

Purpose began to establish a simple brand story – we proposed that as the ‘Design Navigator’, the Design Council would ‘lead people to the real and tangible benefits of design’. This core thought informed a new distinctive and ownable approach to imagery. Dynamic coloured graphic lines and illustrations working with key headlines help to project a sense of the Design Council leading, guiding and supporting.

5. Mike Collinge: Bosphorus

A reduced colour palette featuring just two colours, turquoise and charcoal, gives the brand strong recognition. A series of icons and a three dimensional version of the Ox were created to give the brand a distinctive online presence.

6. Popcorn: Running with Knives

A clean, bold black and white guideline for “Running with Knives”, a London-based hospitality consultancy operating within the luxury sector.

7. Nikolaj Kledzik: Bagel Street Cafe

A type logo brand id and style guide manual for a restaurant.

8. Maud: Edgeboard

Edgeboard are handmade chopping boards from the Northern Beaches in NSW that possess a special feature; an edge which you use to slide off the chopped food against. They use a natural anti-bacterial wood sourced form the Byron Shire. The identity is based on the board’s special feature, the edge, and the brand comes to life using the edge in any application. A simple, structured logo is used in combination with textured and environmentally friendly stocks. (more images here)

9. Kristian Allen Larsen: Deichmanske Library

Deichmans new logo plays on diagonal lines represented in Deichmans new building named “The Diagonal”. Logo values are accommodating, modern & innovative. The logo reflects two basic book covers that meet together for the formation of a architectural expression that will go well with the building. The circle represents deichmann new media such as movies and music. The warm colours helps the building not to be such a cold a strict place and seems like a more accommodating atmosphere for visitors & tourists.

10. Brand Book: Skype

One page from Skype’s brand identity guidelines outlining some the the color codes.

11. Vintage VW Logo Specifications

Graham Smith decided to do a faithful recreation of this for which you can now download and print out as a poster. There are also a few desktop wallpapers, and an iPhone 4 wallpaper.

12. The Calgary Chamber of Commerce by Iancu Barbărasă

A versatile typographic approach and a generous colour palette ensure the new CC brand works well in any situation or partnership.

13. Bedow: Qapital

The small pieces from the logotype are also used to create characteristic ICONS AND ILLUSTRATIONS that infuse the brand with a quirky personality. QAPITAL is an app that helps you save small to live large.

14. Pentagram Design: MoMA

Identity system for the Museum of Modern Art in New York, one of the world’s largest art institutions.

15. Red Stone: BPR

A coherent identity to all four strands of the programme. The guidelines have proved a success across all groups of employees in the organisation.

16. the apartment: yelo spa

Brand style guide for a spa.

17. NOOKA Re-Branding by Jon Patterson

A corporate identity system to better express the ideals of universal language via visual communications.

18. Moving Brands: Ness

Ness’ identity system was strongly influenced by the strategy behind the name. Moving Brands came up with a distinctive method of describing the unique technology at the heart of the Ness brand and its product: “Likeness” – the percentage likelihood that a user will like something.

19. Kommunikat: Autentika Corporate Identity

A very clean and minimal corporate identity style guide.

Some more links and resources related to corporate style guide & manuals: