Before the Internet, printed graphics standards manuals were practical tools for designers. Today, they sell for $80 a pop. In 2012, Pentagram designers Jesse Reed and Hamish Smyth, along with their ...

Standards Manual is an independent publishing imprint founded by designers Jesse Reedand Hamish Smyth to archive and preserve artifacts of design history and make them available to future generations.

The 1969 moon landing was a heady moment in American history. But the romance of putting men in space began to wane after NASA’s Apollo program ended in 1972, until the agency looked to design to help ...

Although it might not be as recognizable south of Windsor, the classic CBC “Gem” logo has the same funky 1970s cachet in Canada as the vintage PBS logo in the States. It was originally designed by ...

A page from the 2014 reissue of the New York City Transit Authority Graphics Standards Manual showing a diagram explaining the use of arrows in wayfinding signage in subway stations (photo courtesy of ...

Ever wonder about the NYC’s subway signage? Most New Yorkers who use the subway daily have probably never heard of the design firm Unimark. In 1970, designers Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda of ...

When I first broke into the graphic design profession in 1984, I already had two Graphic Standards Manuals under my belt as a Rochester Institute of Technology graduate. Manuals consisted of a ...

Perhaps it’s the contemporary obsession with nostalgia, but somehow, just like Brutalism, dated design manuals have made a comeback. Thanks to a few within the design industry—notably “typomaniac” ...

The New York City subway was a confusing mess in the 1960s, with inconsistent, haphazard signage that made navigating the system a nightmare for commuters. In 1967, the New York City Transit Authority ...

One of graphic design’s most famous love triangle begins, as most graphic design stories do, with a request for proposal. It was 1974, and Richard Danne and Bruce Blackburn, founders of New York ...