Skip to main content

​
Contact & Support

Technical support & bug reports: [email protected]
Sales: [email protected]
Design support: Join our community Slack channel
We respond to emails and community Slack messages as rapidly as possible.Our support team is currently in the US West coast timezones, available 9am to 5pm PST. Outside of those hours we do our best to respond quickly.
We’re always eager to hear feature requests and feedback. To suggest a feature or chat about your needs, please email [email protected], or chat us in our community Slack.We record all feedback and requests and review them routinely. Requests and feedback regularly find their way into future app releases. No feedback/request is too small!
Standards is independently designed and developed in the U.S., and born out of the publishing imprint Standards Manual. Our core team is in Seattle, WA and Brooklyn, NY.

​
Why Standards

Learn about the client agency workflow
Branding and design has changed significantly in the last two decades, but the tools to design guidelines are either stuck in the past, or never existed at all.Our own research shows that most designers still deliver guidelines in PDF format, and the reason is clear: design control. Until now, there has not been an online guidelines tool that allows for the design control we demand.Standards is purpose-built tool for designing brand guidelines online, published as a live website that can be updated instantly, shared, and evolve with brands over time.Rich guidelines with video, download, links, and more, can all created with a level of design control that allows you to express the brand design to its full extent, untethered from templates.
Standards is purposely built to design guidelines. To see examples of projects built with Standards, visit our Examples page.Beyond guidelines, Standards can be used to build simple websites, internal company pages (such as training manuals), presentations, and more.Built something cool? Let us know: [email protected]
Standards provides a level of design control not found in other other guidelines tools.As designers ourselves, we tried other guidelines and website builders, but they didn’t provide the control, customization, precision that we demanded. Not to mention, easy to update and share with our teams and clients.
Standards is a no-code guidelines builder.Building guidelines with Standards gives you the control to design a bespoke website without code, developers, or the stress and time involved with a custom build.Standards is purpose-built for brand designers and teams to create guidelines and includes many features that make building guidelines faster, like Automations and outlines.
Unlike template-based website or guidelines builders, Standards is a full-fledged design tool, made by and for designers. We’ve taken great care to make Standards as intuitive as possible and are constantly iterating and improving the editing experience.Like any full-featured design tool, there is a learning curve. Send us an email at [email protected] if you have any questions or would like to schedule a one-on-one training session or demo.
Standards is used by design studios, freelancers, in-house designers, brand teams, marketers, or anyone who wants to compile, organize, and share guidelines or other web-based documents (you may have noticed, but Standards is pretty handy for creating websites, too).With the ability to create an unlimited number of guidelines, Standards complements the workflows of both design studios creating work for various clients, and in-house/brand teams publishing projects for different departments within an organization.

​
Account & billing

Yes, Standards is free to try. Trying Standards for free is great for evaluating the platform and seeing it it will work for your use case. Once you’re ready to publish a project live to the web, you will need to upgrade.Learn more about our plans here.
We offer a 50% off discount of the Pro and Plus plan for students and educators with a current university email address.
No, you can try Standards for free. A credit card is only required if you decide to upgrade to a Plus or Pro plan. Custom billing options are available in the Enterprise plan.
The Plus plan is for solo designers with one or two guidelines. Learn about and compare our plans here.
The Pro plan is aimed at professional designers, studios, and teams collaborating on many guidelines. Learn about and compare our plans here.
The Enterprise plan is for Agencies and in-house brand teams that have broader and more specific needs. The Enterprise plan enables SSO, localization, scripts, white-glove support, custom contracts, and more.
Billing is conducted on an either monthly or annual basis to the credit card linked to your Plus or Pro account.Large agencies or enterprise customers can contact us at [email protected] to discuss access timing and billing options.To learn more about billing, view plan & billing
Not unless you transfer the project to their account on the Plus or Pro plans.How you decide to charge a client is entirely up to you. Generally, we advise that you build in project fees that cover the cost of your Standards account. If you plan on transferring projects to clients, we recommend informing them of the service and costs associated in the proposal stage of the process. We will provide more guidance and tips for recommending Standards to your clients in the future.Learn more about the agency client workflow
Sign into Standards, navigate to your account settings, select Delete account, and follow the prompts.Warning, deleted accounts will lose all project data in workspaces they own. This cannot be reversed.
All storage options are based per project. Plus and Pro plans come with 2 GB storage. Enterprise plans may customize their storage to best fit their organization.Please contact [email protected] if you are near your storage limit.

​
Security

Standards prioritizes network security and data protection, leveraging state-of-the-art measures provided by Google Cloud. All data, both in transit and at rest, is encrypted using the latest encryption protocols.Learn more about Enterpise securityWe also conduct security reviews and questionaires directly with Enterprise plan subscriber’s IT/security teams.
Your data belongs to you. Standards does not have access to sensitive data, only email address and the content uploaded to projects. Customer information is used to help us respond to customer service requests and track user authentication.
Yes. Our security audit processes include third-party testing following industry standards.
The Standards application is powered by Google Cloud, one of the world’s leading data center providers with US-based servers. The Google Cloud platform holds various certifications for its facilities, including the ISO 22301:2019, signifying a stringent commitment to data security.
Standards allows customers to sign on with trusted identity providers Google and Microsoft. You can also sign on with your own identity providers using the SAML 2.0 connection standard, which we recommend for Enterprise customers.Contact [email protected] to inquire about upgrading to the Enterprise plan.
Standards retains internal logs to report application errors and to monitor signs of suspicious activity. Logs are retained for a period of 12 months. If required, account owners can request log exports for special circumstances.

​
Getting started

Yes, this help center is the go-to place for guides. If there something you’re struggling with, don’t hesitate to reach out to [email protected] or join our community Slack to chat directly with our team.
No, you don’t have to use setup and can skip it. Everything in setup—from project name, fonts, logos, colors, and type styles—can be managed later in the editor.We recommend setup for quick guideline automation using outlines, to power Automations, and for new users getting the hang of Standards.
Automations use your high-level brand assets so you can quickly add & customize routine guidelines sections.There are Automations for many commonly used guidelines sections such as logo specimens, color palettes, logo scaling, do’s and dont’s, color palettes, color proportion and much more.Automations take the boring parts of guidelines and give you some time back to design the unique parts of the brand.To learn more about Automations, view our guide Automations
Components let you to save and reuse elements and layouts across your project. They can be updated at any time from a single place, and the changes will sync across your project to each instance.To learn more about Components, view our guide Components.
Standards supports the following formats:✅ .woff ✅ .woff2 (recommended) ✅ .otf ✅ .ttf ✅ Variable fonts are supported (.ttf)To learn more about fonts, view our guide Text
Currently we do not support online type activation services such as Adobe Fonts. Standards requires the reading of font metrics to allow for precise text alignment and control, which means uploading your font files.With most branding projects, your client will be required to purchase a font license regardless, so if using Adobe Fonts or a similar service, we recommend purchasing web font licenses and uploading the font files.
Yes, if you’d like to schedule a demo email [email protected] to schedule a call with our team.

​
Publishing

When your project is finished you can publish it live to the web. Publishing creates a website and link that can be shared publicly or privately. You can publish changes to your project at any time.To learn more about publishing, view Publish & share
Live projects don’t reflect changes you make in the Editor automatically. This allows you to edit your project without fear of disrupting the live website view.If changes have been made in the Editor after publishing, the status indicator in the right-hand corner of the top bar will turn from green to yellow, indicating that unpublished changes have been made.To learn more about publishing, view Publish & share
Projects can be un-published from inside the project editor or the project settings in the dashboard through the Publish & share interface.To learn more about modifying publish options and unpublishing projects, view Publish & share
Yes, Standards supports three distinct breakpoints: Desktop, Tablet, and Mobile. Each can be designed independently from one another.
Yes, projects may be secured by adding a password when published.If you’d like to add a password to a project that has already published or if you want to change your password, open the status modal in the right-hand corner of the top bar inside the Editor.Enterprise plan subscribers have additional security options including required single sign-on, individual invite, group invite by allowed domains, secure embed, and logged access.To learn more about publishing, view Publish & share
With 2 GB storage per project on Plus and Pro plans, many of the features required from a DAM can be met by Standards.Standards can also work in conjunction with an existing DAM if it’s already used by your organization. Linking to any type of file repository is easy, meaning Standards can act as a brand hub that links out to various resources for your brand (such as Dropbox folders, DAM repositories, Figma libraries, etc.)Securely embed your published Standards projects inside an existing DAM, team portal, website, and more with Secure Embed.To learn more about embedding, view Publish & share
We realize many people still use PDFs for brand documents and expect to be able to save a shareable file of their design project.Standards was created with the intent to make brand guidelines more accessible, shareable, up-to-date, and overall more web-oriented. A PDF export feature is incompatible with our product and our goals. We believe the future of guidelines are web-based, so PDF exports don’t align with our vision.However, if you’d like to try creating a PDF from your published site there are a number of website to PDF conversion tools and browser plugins that you can search for and try for yourself.
Yes, you can add an unlimited number of custom domains and sub domains with our Plus, Pro, and Enterprise plans.Alternatively, you can publish projects on the Standards domain for free with a Professional plan. When published, the URL is structured as: live.standards.site/myguidelinesnameTo learn more about custom domains, view Custom domains
No. Once a guidelines is published, there is no limit on page views for the web link. If published as a public project, viewers can openly access the site without an account or credentials (unless you set a password).
Yes. Sometimes your client might want you to hand off a project completely. You can transfer projects to any other account that have a Plus or Pro plan. Your client will need a paid plan to accept the project transfer. During the transfer process, you can choose to keep a copy.Alternatively, if your client (or viewer) only needs to view the published guidelines, you can retain ownership and they can simply view it.To learn more about transferring projects, view Project transfers.
Standards minimizes possible vulnerabilities by following industry best practices and leveraging third-party providers. We use Google Cloud services which are ISO/IEC 27001 compliant, and we do not manage any physical servers or virtual machines. We use the built-in security tools Google provides to grant or restrict access to files and user data. We do not transport or store authentication credentials or billing information, as those are sent to Google and Stripe directly.Enterprise plan accounts have access to the most secure publishing options, including Google and Microsoft SSO, SAML SSO, and Secure Embed.To learn more about project security types, see Publish & share.To learn more about setting up SAML SSO see SAML SSO integration
Yes, Standards has Google Single Sign-On (SSO) and Microsoft SSO for both project viewers and workspace members.Enterprise plan subscribers can publish projects and require viewers sign in via Google, Microsoft, and SAML SSO methods.To learn more about project security types, see Publish & shareTo learn more about setting up SAML SSO see SAML SSO integration