I am designing a series of landing pages for a company I work. There are a number of other company's logos included and the design would look much better if the logos were grayed out. From looking at each company's brand guidelines, I see that most allow for this apart from a few, but my managers insist that company permission is necessary for this.
Is this true?
If not, what's the best way to argue for this?
i.e. the argument that this is a fairly common practice doesn't seem to stick
Follow the brand guidelines. They are there for a reason. I know it sucks but that's how it is. If you spent hours of your life creating detailed brand guidelines just for people to ignore it, you wouldn't be happy (I'm not anyway).
If there aren't any brand guidelines (you should actually request these, not just search the company's website) then by all means go ahead. If you are working with a group of logos with different guidelines, I would suggest consistency—if any of the brand guidelines you are working with don't allow you to do what you want, don't do it at all.
The reason you want to give for graying out the logos is that they need to be downplayed in relation to your own branding and style. They are shown probably as examples of partners or some such thing, they are secondary to your product/company logo and should visually reflect that. You don't have to follow other companies brand guidelines in work that is not for them– they are called "guidelines" for a reason. As long as you aren't altering the intent of the logo– but just graying out so the colors don't conflict with the branding/style you're trying to convey– I highly doubt you will have anyone knocking at your door complaining.
