Marine Stewardship Council Brand Guidelines: WWF, Unilever & the Blue Fish Label

A collapsed fishery, and two unlikely partners.

The Marine Stewardship Council, or MSC, grew out of a collapse. Its own timeline starts in 1992, with the failure of the Grand Banks cod fishery off Canada, which it says cost 35,000 fishers and plant workers their jobs across more than 400 coastal communities. In 1995, the timeline says, conservationists from WWF met representatives of Unilever; the MSC’s 2016–17 annual report describes Unilever as “then owner of the Birds Eye and Iglo brands.” A statement of intent signed by both followed in 1996.

Founding dates differ by a year because of those steps. English Wikipedia says the MSC was founded in 1996. The annual report says it was formally registered as an independent not-for-profit organisation on 17 February 1997, and press accounts, including a Sapa-AFP report of 2013, also use 1997. Wikipedia dates its independence from the two founding partners to 1999. The Ecologist reported in 2007 that neither sat on the management board by then, while Unilever continued to give funds.

The idea, as the annual report tells it, was “a market-led mechanism”: businesses and consumers could choose seafood from independently certified fisheries, giving other fisheries an incentive to change. The Fisheries Standard followed 18 months of consultation with more than 300 scientists, academics and organisations; the MSC’s online timeline dates it to 1998. The timeline says the programme became fully operational in 1999.

The first certificates and the first labels came in 2000. The MSC says the Western Australia rock lobster fishery was the first certified, in March, and that the Alaska salmon fishery followed in September; the 2016–17 report also names Thames Blackwater herring among the first three. That August the Chain of Custody Standard launched, and the blue fish label appeared on its first products.

The MSC is today a non-profit and registered charity with its headquarters in London and regional offices for the Americas and Asia Pacific. It is governed by a Board of Trustees of up to nine members, chaired since February 2024 by Giles Bolton, a former Tesco director of responsible sourcing and packaging. Rupert Howes, its chief executive, joined in October 2004.

Six features that may not be separated.

The MSC publishes its label rules openly, and they read like a small brand manual. The guidelines say the label has six features that “may not be separated from each other or altered in any way”: the phrase “Certified sustainable seafood,” the letters MSC, the website address, the oval fish checkmark, the TM symbol, and a white keyline around both the checkmark and the label. It comes in vertical and horizontal formats.

Colour is treated as recognition. Consumers “recognise and look for the ‘blue fish label,’” the guidelines say, and they specify one MSC blue for print and screen. A solid monotone version is allowed only in exceptional circumstances, such as black-and-white packaging, with a warning that it will affect recognition. The minimum sizes are 10mm high for the horizontal label and 14mm wide for the vertical one. At minimum size, clear space is at least 2mm from product text and at least 5mm from brand names and logos; at larger sizes it is 10% of the label’s height or width.

The list of prohibitions is familiar to any designer: no tilting, no distortion, no recolouring, no removing the keyline or the trademark symbol, nothing placed over the label. On packaging the label must sit on the front. Every labelled product must also carry a Chain of Custody code, in the format MSC-C followed by digits, and a claim chosen from set wordings. The acronym and the full name are not allowed alone. The MSC says it is revising these claims to align with a new European Union law.

Behind the label sit two standards. The MSC says fisheries are assessed on three principles: stock health, minimising environmental impact and effective management. Assessments are carried out by independent conformity assessment bodies, paid by the applicant; the Chain of Custody Standard, it says, ensures that labelled seafood comes from certified fisheries. The MSC released version 3.0 of its Fisheries Standard in October 2022.

Money runs through the label too. The MSC says most of its income comes from the logo licensing fee paid by brands, retailers and food-service companies that use it on consumer-facing products, and that it receives no income from assessing or certifying fisheries.

The MSC’s timeline marks its reach through big buyers, listing Alaska pollock’s certification in 2005, Walmart’s sourcing commitment in 2006, McDonald’s in Europe in 2011 and the London Olympic Games in 2012. By its own count more than 500 fisheries were certified in 2022, and in 2025 the programme passed 20% of global wild catch engaged.

Marks, licences and small print.

A certification mark does a different job from a company logo. It does not sell one maker’s goods; it sits on other companies’ packs, often in a corner, and asks shoppers to trust a set of rules they will rarely read. That makes these schemes unusual design subjects. The visible part is tiny, while the system behind it fills manuals, licence contracts and audit reports.

The manuals are often public, and they are unusually exact. The FAIRTRADE Mark Guidelines set a clear space, a size guide from posters down to labels and hang tags, and a minimum printed width. The Rainforest Alliance’s seal guidelines set a minimum size so that a QR code still scans, and forbid printing the seal across a fold. Fairtrade gives legibility as its reason and the Rainforest Alliance gives scanning, and in both cases the same mark has to work on a large pack, a label or a hang tag, printed by many different companies.

Around the mark sit smaller pieces of evidence. Schemes may ask for a claim beside the mark, a licence or producer number on the pack, or a web address that leads back to the standard. Fairtrade’s guidelines, for example, call for a producer FLO ID or a national reference code in some cases. Behind them sit audits and certificates: the Rainforest Alliance says only those who meet a standard after an audit may display its seal.

This group of guides looks at how these schemes present themselves: who founded them, who owns the mark, what each scheme says it certifies, and what its logo rules ask of the brands that use it. Where critics have challenged a scheme, the guide says so, and what the mark means is given in the scheme’s own terms.

A label under steady scientific challenge.

The MSC’s certifications have been disputed for much of its life, and critics have aimed at the same structure that funds it. In 2007 The Ecologist reported criticism that it did not apply its standards evenly. In September 2010 FishSec reported on an opinion piece in Nature by Daniel Pauly and five other scientists, who wrote that the MSC was “rapidly failing on its promise.” They cited the eastern Bering Sea pollock fishery, certified in 2005, where they said spawning biomass fell by 64 percent between 2004 and 2009, and they argued that applicants paying commercial assessors implied a possible conflict of interest.

In April 2013 Sapa-AFP reported a paper in Biological Conservation calling the principles “too lenient and discretionary” and finding that one of 19 objections had been upheld in a way that led to a refusal. The MSC called its procedure “independent, fair and transparent,” disputed the method, and said some of the researchers, or the NGOs employing them, had filed about a third of the objections.

In late 2016 The Grocer reported that a leaked internal WWF paper, covered by The Times, accused the MSC of a “financial interest in certification outcomes.” Howes replied that the MSC was “premised on stakeholder involvement, independent assessment and scientific rigour.” WWF called the paper an unreviewed draft, then said parts reflected its understanding of challenges in Indian Ocean tuna certification. In March 2018, The Maritime Executive reported, WWF itself called for reforms, after Greenpeace, the Environmental Justice Foundation and others alleged that fisheries with unacceptable impacts were being certified.

English Wikipedia records disputes over the Ross Sea toothfish and Antarctic krill certifications, and criticism in the 2021 documentary Seaspiracy. It also notes that an Accenture study commissioned by WWF ranked the MSC highest among seven seafood schemes in 2009 and again in 2012. Certificates can also lapse: Baird Maritime reported in June 2025 that North Sea saithe would be suspended from 30 June after revised scientific advice on the stock.

For a design guide, the Marine Stewardship Council shows how much governance a small oval can carry: one colour, a fixed lock-up, a traceable code and a licence that also pays for the organisation. Compare Forest Stewardship Council, the forestry scheme that Jared Diamond’s Collapse discussed alongside the MSC, English Wikipedia says, and WWF, one of the two founders. For this guide we use deep blues and a pale sea foam with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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