Hello all! It’s Jono, here again to provide a very unique instalment of ‘A Not so Little Look at’.
Today, we’re going to be looking in depth at something that many people who know about the Sonic franchise won’t normally get to see: A style guide. In this case, a style guide to Classic style Sonic the hedgehog.
A style guide is a book, that is sent to merchandise companies to help them create products and packaging that will fit within the brand requirements set out by the license holder. This ring-bound style guide contains many things on how to go about creating Sonic merch; including character artwork, slogans, borders, typefaces, packaging ideas, and even a character height chart as well as a whole host of other information.
With so much information, the book is actually fairly weighty (about 80 pages in fact), and is certainly comprehensive. It’s really a fascinating thing to look through, and to notice all the little touches mentioned in this book seen in real-world products. Paladone certainly would have used this guide when creating their lines of Sonic gear.
You may also notice that this guide contains no references or images of Modern Sonic at all. This is because there is in fact a separate style guide dedicated exclusively to Modern Sonic products (which would you believe, is even more extensive than this guide!) In fact, this guide specifically requests that the Modern and Classic Sonic be kept entirely separate from each other.
Below is a complete set of scans from the book (with some blank pages omitted). Have a read!
