How does your team maintain a distinct brand?

[cadandcookies]

I've noticed that some teams (254 in particular) have either publicly released or seem to have some sort of consistent design elements across all media that they release. By this I mean things like 254's team branding guidelines, or even more informal things like team 1816 Green Machine's gear eyes. I'm curious as to how other teams, including 254, have come up with and maintained their logo, team colors, and other design elements throughout the years. I'm also curious as to whether other teams have developed a "branding guide" like 254's, whether internal or public, and how they arrived at the elements that constitute that "brand."

As an aside, my team has been looking at creating a guidebook to our team's "design elements" in order to help streamline the creation of promotional media , t-shirts, poster, and other items. We (or at least a segment of the team) think that arriving at some sort of consensus as to what constitutes our team "brand" will help us present a more professional and consistent face in all of our activities.