On the blue, the green and the grey

October 9, 2007 6:13 PM

Best examples of branding across multiple domains?

I'm looking for a few great and not-so-great examples of websites that share branding elements across multiple domains, from entire templates with simple color scheme changes to outright different designs with a similar navigation system to bind them together.

Metafilter's a great example already. Any others that stand out to you? Much obliged!

posted by disillusioned to computers & internet (9 comments total)

Not sure if it is a great example, but slashdot.org kinda does the same thing. Each section (subdomain) of slashdot has a different but related theme.
posted by schwa at 6:28 PM on October 9, 2007

All of the Gawker Media blogs (Consumerist, Jezebel, Lifehacker, among others) always stand out to me as being part of the same group by their unified blog formatting.
posted by Zephyrial at 6:30 PM on October 9, 2007

Each sub-domain of IGN has the same template with different images and colour schemes. They cover different video game consoles (Wii, PS3), DVDs, TV, etc.
posted by Gary at 6:32 PM on October 9, 2007

colonies.com comes to mind
posted by hungrysquirrels at 6:48 PM on October 9, 2007

The Popsugar empire includes TeamSugar, GiggleSugar, GeekSugar, YumSugar, DearSugar, FitSugar, BuzzSugar, CasaSugar, BellaSugar, FabSugar, and ShopStyle. They pretty much all have a unified look and feel.
posted by mattbucher at 7:24 PM on October 9, 2007

Ah, how about Google? Maps, Images, etc....
posted by amtho at 7:44 PM on October 9, 2007

Yahoo does it poorly, and does it well; it depends on the subset of properties you're looking at.

I recommend cruising around all of their properties (here's a list) -- in short order, you'll get a feel for the Yahoo brand just by virtue of the non-properly-branded ones being completely unlike each other, and when a site does/doesn't conform it'll become obvious to you very quickly.
posted by davejay at 9:52 PM on October 9, 2007

Thanks all; just what I was looking for.

Gawker I was thinking of already (having worked for them ;-) think they're important to showcase how different the formats flow between properties while still allowing for linking between them.

Perfect! Hive mind for the win.
posted by disillusioned at 10:46 PM on October 9, 2007

Gothamist Media does this too. Austinist, Bostonist, Chicagoist, Hustonist, Londonist, LAist, etc.
posted by Mach5 at 5:56 AM on October 10, 2007