If you are a graphic designer or an interaction designer and have ever been tasked with creating a style guide or UI guidelines document (both are different and I’ve had the pleasure to work on both of them creating templates and the actual documents for brands and products), this list should help you out as a consolidated list of references. This list is going to be constantly updated (and will ultimately be a monster list, it’s quite modest for now) of publicly accessible style guides and UI guideline documents on the web. If you find any links not working or would like to suggest one that is not on the list, feel free to comment and let me know.
- 3M
- ABB Brand Identity
- ACDSee Brand Style Guide
- Air Products Identity Standards
- Ameritech Graphical User Interface Standards and Design Guidelines (This one is from the Internet Archive)
- AMAIA Residence Brand Manual (PDF, 816 kb)
- Android User Interface Guidelines
- Apple Human Interface Guidelines
- Barbican Brand Guidelines for Print / Web / and Plasmas
- BBC Future Media Standards & Guidelines
- BBC Global Experience Language (GEL)
- Belfast Zoo Brand guidelines
- Blackberry and RIM wireless handheld UI Developers Guide (PDF, 1.3 mb)
- BlackBerry Branding Guidelines (PDF, 300 kb)
- Brick brand guidelines
- Cargill Identity Style Guide
- Cambridge University Brand Manual
- Cunard Brand Guidelines
- Easy Group Brand Manual (PDF, 2 mb)
- Eclipse User Interface Guidelines
- Federal Identity Program (Canada)
- GOOD Technology Brand Identity Guide
- Gnome Human Interface Guidelines
- Heineken Brand Manual
- iPhone Human Interface Guidelines
- Java Look and Feel Design Guidelines
- KDE User Interface Guidelines
- Kew’s Brand Guidelines (PDF, 5 mb)
- Microsoft Inductive User Interface Guidelines
- Microsoft Surface User Experience Guidelines
- MITRE- Guidelines for designing user interface software
- NASA’s webstyle guide
- Novozymes’ brand guide
- The New School Visual Identity Manual (PDF, 6.5 mb)
- The New School Web Style Guide
- Nokia Design and User Experience Library
- Oracle Technology Network Guidelines
- Palm User Interface & Human Interface Guidelines
- RSA brand standards
- SAP Interaction Design Guide for Internet Application Components
- SAP Design Guild
- SAP User Interface guidelines
- Silicon Graphics Indigo Magic User Interface Guidelines
- Skype Brand Identity Guidelines
- Spelman College Visual Identity Guidelines (PDF, 1.3 mb)
- Reuters Brand Center
- Taligent Human Interface Guidelines
- WebEx brand style guide
- Web Style Guide 2nd edition
- Windows User Experience
- Windows User Experience Guidelines
- Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines
- Windows XP Visual Guidelines (There’s a download section to the right to download WindowsXP DesignGuidelines)
- Yale Web Style Guide
- Yale’s Visual Identity
- Yahoo! Style guide
DezineConnect celebrates design from India. DezineConnect aims to showcase Indian designers, design buyers, and design support people.
Dezine Connect
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The Book Cover Archive is an archive of book cover design and designers for the purpose of appreciation and categorization.
The Book Cover Archive
The difference between a good designer and a successful designer is self promotion. Churning out innovative, high-quality work is important, but making sure the right people take notice of it and remember who it’s by is even more crucial.
Self-promotion doesn’t mean selling out, though. Clever mailers, a well-stocked blog, quirky gifts and memorable business cards all help shape Brand You. The article brings advice from the top on how you can take some simple steps to ensure your name is the first that springs to mind when art directors and commissioning editors reach for their contacts books.
30 self-promotion tips
Brand New is a website that’s sole purpose is to chronicle and provide opinions on corporate and brand identity work, focusing mostly on identity design and a modest amount of packaging. We cover redesigns and new designs. Nothing more, nothing less, what you see is what you get.
Brand New
Update (Feb 11, 2010): New Android GUI PSD v. 2.0
Photoshop file with elements of Android GUI. You can use Android GUI PSD for all of your projects. It was made to help open-source community with Android applications mock-ups.
- More resizable phone illustration
- More basic screens
Android GUI PSD Vector Kit V 2.0
Android GUI Starter Kit is a set that comes with several button elements as well as different interface options for Android GUI. Android GUI PSD is based on elements of Android 1.5 GUI and was made to help the open-source community with Android applications mock-ups. Most of the elements and phone illustration are made in vector path so they are easily resizable. For text, Android Sans was used.
Android GUI PSD Vector Kit V1.0
Population is rapidly aging and becoming a larger share of the marketplace. Thirteen percent of the population is currently over 65 years old. In 30 years that group will double to 66 million people.
People change as they age. Sensory, cognitive and motor abilities decline. The built environment is not typically created with the needs of the aging population in mind. How does the choice of typeface in signage systems, for example, impact the older viewer who is experiencing vision problems typical to that age group? Are certain typefaces more suitable to the aging eye?
Typography and the Aging Eye: Typeface Legibility for Older Viewers with Vision Problems
The icons or baby faces used as part of user interface have now turned into a major aspect of product branding. With powerful computers, enhanced graphics capabilities, advanced tools for illustration, and professionals to advocate rich user experience, icon design has become more important and complex than ever before! Windows Vista has raised the standard of quality icons even higher. An interface design project forced the author to think about ’style’ in icon design.
What are the possible ways to overcome problems related to style of icons?
- Create sample icons which are representative of the complexity and overall range of icons required for the project. These icons should be best rendered and acceptable in terms of desired quality and style.
- Define style guidelines (all attributes shown above as applicable) based on sample icon designs.
- Sensitize the entire design team to understand the style sensitive attributes of icon design. Help them notice and feel each attribute of the style.
- Select the designers whose style of designing/rendering is naturally similar.
- Lead designer(s) to sketch and compose all icons before they get rendered.
- Lead designer to monitor and guide the rendering (This is similar to the model of key animators and in-between artists followed in animation field).
- Review the stylistic aspects as per the guidelines.
- Ask users / designers / developers to identify the misfit icons in terms of style.
Proper definition of style attributes can be helpful in evaluating the consistency of style.
- Refine
Beware of Style in Icon Design
The Identity Archives Project is a keyword-searchable database of logos and brand identity designs from around the world. Registration is not required and use of the database is free and open to everyone- be it designers, brand managers, marketing professionals, educators, students, brand identity design enthusiasts or the general public.
The Identity Archives
The website takes you through the following topics:
- Symbols: How and what they communicate
- How handwriting developed and translated into printed type
- Typographic Milestones: 1450-1960
- A condensed history of the book
- Arts & crafts and the private press movement
- The poster’s development and social impact
- The twentieth century avant-garde’s influence of graphic design
- The Bauhaus
- The origins of advertising
- The digital revolution in graphic design
- New Wave, post modern, post industrial and deconstuctionism
The History of Graphic Design