A styleguide for people who don’t like styleguides

Most major corporations have strict guidelines detailing how their logos should be used. Some can be cumbersome, espousing rules for everything from minimum size requirements to how it should look on the back of a gas guzzling 4x4. The GE styleguide, for example, is a tome at over 300 pages. Imagine my shock, when I stumbled upon MTV’s identity guidelines. It’s one page!

The styleguide shows the main artwork, suggested colors, and some things not to do to the logo. Nothing more. There’s not even a cover. London agency, Hi-Res, designed the styleguide, describing it as:

…a styleguide for people who don’t like styleguides.

Our concept was to introduce the simple concept of Hijacking Reality. If MTV and the videos that are shown do not portrait the real world (after all, there’s not much dancing in the streets in general and none of our friends drive Ferraris and sit in Jacussis all day), the way to express the reality of MTV would be to combine two things—-reality and another element which would turn it into something new.

A simple concept, which we could apply to all forms of communication!

I don’t get the “Hijacking Reality” part, but the idea of creating a minimal styleguide that’s easy for people to understand and distribute is great.

I think it’s quite brilliant. What about you?

Update (September 3): Apologies, I’ve made an error. Looks like Hi-Res may not have designed this one-page styleguide after all. I had assumed the images on Hi-Res’s website were of promotional materials introducing the one-page styleguide. But after taking a closer look, I’m not even sure they designed it, since the one-pager isn’t shown in any of Hi-Res’s images. I’ve searched Google, and can’t seem to find a definitive answer to who designed it? Can anyone shed some light on who the mystery designer or agency is?

Update (September 4): Florian Schmitt, Creative Director of Hi-Res, wrote me to clarify the matter:

I have no idea where you got this styleguide from, it looks like a variation of something that formed part of the overall package we made with Precursor, but it’s not something we have done. Our stlyeguide didn’t even have logo guidelines, but was rather a box with inspirational material, not rules. No idea where this is from, but I would assume that MTV produced this themselves.

Best
F

I’ve gone ahead and striked through the parts of the original post that mistakenly credited the one-page styleguide to Hi-Res. Sorry again for this error.