A couple of weeks ago I was scanning my way through several hundred missed Tweets when I stumbled across this link to a 1920s Coca-Cola Logo Wall Painting guidelines document. It fascinated me to think that even back then, so much time and effort had gone into standardizing the drawing of the Coca-Cola logo, and other details such as brand color consistency. From the four pages on display it was clear that the basic structure of a brand guidelines document hasn’t changed all that much in the 80 years since this one was put together, and it reminded me of parts of the brand guidelines (graphic standards) documents we offer at KA+A as a key part of our brand identity design services.

The purpose of a basic graphic standards document is to give instruction on the configuration and proper usage of a corporate logo, to outline brand colors and typography, and of course, to demonstrate misuse of brand elements. Often there are extensive instructions on formatting corporate literature, and there even exists dedicated interactive guidelines to ensure brand consistency on the web. These documents can range from a few pages in length for a start-up, to several hundred pages for a large corporation.

Below is a comparison of the three Coca-Cola pages with detail of some of our own graphic standards documents we have produced for our clients.

Logo Configuration

Looking at the ‘configuration’ page of the Coca-Cola document, you can see the extent to which the it goes to detail the proportions of the logo using a simple grid, to ensure it is drawn with accuracy and consistency, time after time. Nowadays of course, most applications of a logo typically utilize digital files of pre-prepared artwork, negating the need to go into such detail. In fact, most modern graphic standards strictly specify the logo should not be recreated and only approved artwork should be used.

In comparison, our logo Clear Space and Sizing page for Bigger Africa, details the clear space to be left surrounding the logo as a buffer zone to ensure clarity. It also specifies a minimum size for print and on-screen applications.

Logo Misuse

Proper drawing of the Coca-Cola logo is explained in the page above by detailing the correct way to draw specific elements of the logo, alongside the common errors that were typically made.

Again, due to the use of digital files, our page for Graphite is set up a little differently, but the function remains the same. It states exactly what should NOT be done to the client logo, such as stretching, rotating, or attempting to recreate the logo if digital files are not available.

Color Palettes

The Coca-Cola color palette page above is a very simple example of how to specify brand colors. As the document was produced for wall painting purposes, the paint colors were produced especially for Coca-Cola by Dulux.

Thanks to the development of primary and secondary color palettes, we were able to be a little more creative on our color palette page for FormSpring. Additional pages contain a detailed breakdown of the brand colors including values for the Pantone Matching System (PMS), CMYK, RGB and Hexadecimal values for the web.

Conclusion

A large part of Coca-Cola’s brand success is owed to the early adoption of graphic standards such as these. Early standardization of the logo and color palette, plus consistent, accurate applications over several decades has allowed Coca-Cola to become one of the most instantly recognizable brands of all time. All brands, established or emerging, can find their own success by building and internalizing a brand strategy, and committing to apply it consistently over time.