An early web-based brand guidelines system created in 2004 for NIVEA, covering brand identity, typography, colors, and logo usage across different product lines. This served as an internal reference tool for maintaining brand consistency across the NIVEA product family.

At that time, brands typically maintained loose guidelines as printed booklets or PDFs, making it nearly impossible to keep teams and departments in sync for brand coherence. Digital Asset Management tools like Frontify or Brandfolder weren’t available yet (both were founded around 2012).

Since this was the first centrally documented style guide for NIVEA, the project involved extensive research and stakeholder interviews. We spoke with agencies handling branding, advertising, and packaging, internal teams responsible for the documentation of the brand’s legacy, the designer of the NIVEA font family, and production specialists involved in everything from the NIVEA can to printed promotional materials.

The following screens show an early prototype we created for internal feedback. In this review PDF, a later expansion state can be seen.