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New brand guidelines design tool Standards 'takes the best from the past, and is built for design today'

Most graphic designers are aware/in awe of Standards Manual, the independent publishing imprint founded by designers Jesse Reed and Hamish Smyth in New York City in 2014.

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Smartphone displaying the Standards brand guidelines tool with a colourful grid system at the top and iconography examples below the word "standards

The publisher archives, preserves and publishes design history collections such as artefacts related to the New York City Subway, a compilation of 60 years' work from the seminal New York design firm Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv, founded in 1957 by Ivan Chermayeff and Tom Geismar; as well as (as the name suggests) reprinted standards manuals from organisations including NASA and EPA. Their broad aim is to put out titles that help "make great design available to all".

Now, the team behind Standards Manual and design studio Order has created Standards, a new online tool for designers creating brand guidelines.

According to its founders, Reed and Smyth (who are also partners at Order), the platform "takes the best from the past, and is built for design today."

The pair worked with Seattle-based design and development agency Shore to build a tool "for how designers actually work now," says the team. "As the approach to design has shifted from static to dynamic, the tools for creating, sharing, and using brand guidelines have been stubbornly stuck in the past, too." Their Standards platform promises "no more templates, clunky PDFs, or static asset handoffs."

Instead, Standards enables designers to fluidly embed necessary information such as colour values, adaptable assets, typefaces, and animation directly into their guidelines.

Order created the identity, UX/UI, and product experience for Standards in collaboration with Shore, with the designs inspired by the "iconic forms established by influential graphics standards manuals of the past."

The typography uses similar reference points: the team chose Klim Type Foundry's Söhne family, which was designed to capture the essence of Standard Medium, as used in Unimark's NYCTA Graphic Standards Manual.

"Standards takes the knowledge we've gained from Standards Manual and introduces enhanced functionality that the web allows," says the team. "...all based on the best design principles of the past, while looking forward to the future of branding."

Black and white cards displaying text about Standards' brand guidelines tool, including "join the waitlist for early access" and "a new brand guidelines tool
Standards website showing a bell icon design on a blue grid pattern with measurement guides
Standards logo with word in black sans-serif typeface and small red square punctuation mark on light grey background
Large black text reading "Leading distance of text" with blue guidelines and a tooltip showing typography specifications for 50pt, 64pt leading and -10 tracking
Colour palette showing yellow, orange and red swatches with corresponding CMYK, RGB and hexadecimal colour codes displayed alongside Söhne Kräftig typography samples
Blue background with white right-pointing arrows on the left side, and multiple variations of the word "kräftig" displayed in different typefaces on the right side
Abstract teal and white design with rounded shapes and a light blue tooltip showing "primary logo" text against a dark teal background
A dropdown menu showing logo colour options with None, Black (selected with a tick), White, and Orange listed
Grid of letterforms showing the letters a, b, c, d and e in varying font weights and sizes in black on light grey background
Standards brand guidelines tool interface showing colourful geometric shapes including nested teal quatrefoils, blue and yellow rectangles, and coral pink section with the Standards logo and wordmark at top
Standards website domains displayed on black background: standards.site, standards.support, standards.learn and standards.product
Colour palette grid showing ten squares with CMYK, RGB and hex values, ranging from white and grey tones to light blue, dark grey, black and bright red
Standards brand guidelines tool interface showing letter spacing measurements with vertical guide lines and numerical values
A graphic design interface showing abstract shapes including a blue rectangle, teal heart-like form and red rectangle with accompanying vertical lines and numbered elements above
Mobile phone screen showing the Standards.site Posts interface with a yellow notebook design featuring the British Airways Authority branding visible below
Geometric composition with a large red circle, smaller blue circles, orange circles and repeated "Söhr" text on white background
Three horizontal colour blocks in coral red, emerald green and royal blue with a tooltip displaying CMYK, RGB and hex colour values for the green section
Minimalist line-drawn cigarette icon in white with red filter tip on black background
Simple white taxi cab icon with yellow roof light on black background
Black and white photograph of a New York City subway train with passengers boarding and standing on the platform beneath directional signage
White downward-pointing arrow on a bright red background, representing the Standards brand guidelines platform
White airplane icon on black background, representing travel or aviation symbolism
Bright red square on a light grey background
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