Kwaku Amprako is a logo and brand identity designer, educator, and founder of Akrivi — pioneering BIDA (Brand Identity Design Automation) to empower designers to create with more speed, precision, and less stress.
10 Best Brand Guidelines Examples for Tech Companies
Learn from the best. Here are 10 tech brand guidelines to inspire your next project.
Tech brands live and die by consistency. From the app icon on your phone to the website and marketing materials, a unified brand experience builds trust and recognition. The key to achieving that consistency is a great brand guideline.
To give you some inspiration, I’ve pulled together 10 of the best brand guideline examples from leading tech companies, both large and small.
Pay attention to how these brands focus on digital use cases, provide clear assets for partners, and build systems that are built to scale.
1. IBM
IBM's Design Language is a masterclass in building a comprehensive, living system for a global brand. It’s more than a document; it’s a full resource hub.
My key takeaways:
- Living System: The "what's new" section proves a crucial point I always teach: brand guidelines are not static. They must evolve with the brand.
- Clarity in Data: Their rules for data visualization are about achieving precision in communication, a core principle for any tech brand.
- Actionable Resources: IBM doesn't just show rules; it provides downloadable kits. This is all about improving the workflow and efficiency of their design and development teams.
2. DevRev
DevRev's brand guidelines are a perfect example of a modern, digital-first approach. It's clean, concise, and incredibly easy to navigate.
My key takeaways:
- Focus on Efficiency: A single-page site is fast and removes friction. It gives users exactly what they need without overwhelming them, which is a principle I build into my own tools.
- Motion as a Core Component: This is a crucial lesson for modern tech brands. By providing Lottie files and motion guidance, they treat animation as a key part of the identity, not an afterthought.
- Interactive & Practical: The guidelines are interactive, which is not just a cool feature—it's a practical way to demonstrate the brand system in action.
3. Bang & Olufsen
As a premium tech brand, B&O's guidelines perfectly reflect their commitment to quality and sophisticated design. It feels exclusive and well-crafted.
My key takeaways:
- Brand Personality First: They dedicate a huge section to their "Sound & Wording," proving that a brand's voice and personality should drive the visual identity.
- Precision in Imagery: The photography guidelines are exceptional. They define a clear and precise visual mood through rules on lighting and composition.
- Professional Governance: The use of a login to protect core assets demonstrates a level of brand governance that serious companies need to implement.
4. Klarna
Klarna's guidelines are a brilliant example of how to manage a brand that needs to be used correctly by thousands of external partners.
My key takeaways:
- Built for an Ecosystem: The entire site is designed for partners. It focuses on solving their problems by making it easy to find badges and co-marketing assets.
- Self-Service Workflow: The site is designed for self-service, which is a lesson in efficiency. It empowers users and reduces the support burden on the internal team.
- Clarity Through Simplicity: The "Do's and Don'ts" are simple, visual, and impossible to misinterpret. This is key to preventing brand misuse at scale.
5. Beyond Gravity
This is a fantastic example of a brand guideline for a highly technical and futuristic company. The design of the guidelines themselves feels innovative.
My key takeaways:
- Technical Precision: The rules for their 3D logo, including lighting and materials, show an incredible commitment to precision, even in complex applications.
- Systematic Gradients: The section on gradients is detailed and specific. It creates a clear system that ensures their core visual element is always applied correctly.
- Multi-Sensory Branding: Including a "Sound Logo" shows a forward-thinking approach to brand identity that goes beyond just visuals.
6. Netflix
The Netflix brand site is clean, iconic, and straight to the point. It’s built for speed and clarity, just like their product.
My key takeaways:
- Focus on the Essentials: Netflix proves that guidelines don't need to be 100 pages long. They focus on the most critical assets—the logo, symbol, and color—to ensure maximum clarity.
- Strong Brand Governance: By requiring approval for most use cases, they maintain tight control over their iconic brand, which is a smart move for a company of their scale.
- Visual "Don'ts": Their section on what not to do is purely visual and easy to understand. This is something I build into my templates because it's the fastest way to prevent logo misuse.
7. Dropbox
Dropbox's brand guidelines are a great example of a flexible, creative, and modern tech brand. It’s less about rigid rules and more about a creative system.
My key takeaways:
- Systematic Creativity: Their flexible color palette isn't a free-for-all. It's a well-defined system that encourages creativity while maintaining brand consistency.
- Scalable Illustration Style: The guidelines for their unique illustration style are clear and detailed, allowing any designer to create new illustrations that feel part of the same family.
- Simplicity is Key: The clean and simple site proves that brand guidelines should be easy to use. A complex document that no one reads is a failed document.
8. Trustpilot
Trustpilot’s guidelines are a masterclass in practicality. They are focused on one primary goal: ensuring other businesses use their trust marks correctly.
My key takeaways:
- Clarity for Partners: They provide very specific rules for how other companies can and cannot use the Trustpilot logo and star ratings. There is no room for confusion.
- Real-World Application: The site is filled with practical, real-world examples of how to apply their assets in marketing, which is incredibly helpful for users.
- Frictionless Access: The guidelines are public and easy to access, which is essential for a brand that needs to be adopted by as many other businesses as possible.
9. Sinch
Sinch provides a clean, comprehensive, and well-structured set of guidelines that are a perfect example of a modern B2B tech brand.
My key takeaways:
- A Component-Based System: Breaking the brand down into "core components" is a very systematic and logical way to build a design system. It's scalable and easy for designers and developers to understand.
- Content as a Brand Element: Their UX writing section shows a deep understanding of branding. They treat the words in their product as a core part of the brand identity, not just an afterthought.
- Focus on User Experience: The guidelines are incredibly well-organized and easy to navigate. They applied UX principles to the design of the guidelines themselves.
10. Firefox
The Firefox brand guidelines are part of the larger Mozilla Design System, making them a fantastic example of how a brand identity fits into a product design ecosystem.
My key takeaways:
- System of Systems: They do a great job of showing how the parent brand (Mozilla) and the product brand (Firefox) all work together as a cohesive family of logos and icons.
- Built for the Community: True to their open-source roots, their guidelines are public, detailed, and built to empower their community to use the brand correctly.
- Principles Over Rules: The guidelines are built around a clear set of principles. This explains the "why" behind the design decisions, which is more empowering than just listing rules.
The Future of Brand Guidelines
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Ready to Build Your Own Professional Guidelines?
Inspired by these examples? The good news is you don't need a massive team to create professional guidelines. The key is having a strong structure and an efficient workflow. Thats why I'm giving you a FREE Guidelines Templates. You can download all three templates today from the brand guidelines landing page.
Conclusion
As you can see, the best tech brand guidelines are clear, accessible, and built for the real world. They provide not just rules, but resources, and are designed to empower teams to use the brand with confidence.
Use these examples as inspiration to build brand systems that are not only beautiful but also practical and built to last. Discover how this Guideit is changing how you make brand guidelines.
