6 Things to Put in Your Design Guide Right Now
Design guides can be a valuable tool to maximize the output of your design team and ensure consistency in brand identity. Here are six key components to designing successful guides.
A design guide is not just a document to help you create a website or brand identity. A design guide can be considered a work of art and used in daily design work. It reflects the goals and objectives of your project. It should combine elements of voice, design, and code in a manageable, understandable, and simple way to use.
These six design elements are the foundation of your documentation. If they aren’t, you should immediately revise your guide!
1. Examples of brand identity
Your brand identity should be displayed in a format representative of how you want your design materials to look. This is an excellent example of show, do not tell. (Although some telling in the guide accompanies the visual illustrations.
Real-life examples that demonstrate precisely what design standards portray are the best.
Take screenshots of your website, mobile homepage, or app, and show how the design looks best.
The Love to Ride design book is unique in that each page looks exactly like the website. This creates brand consistency. The guide focuses on even the most minor design details, such as the right style for app icons in an accurate display.
You do not need additional work to show visual elements in a design manual. Because there is visual proof, your team can see that the guideline works in practice.
2. Design Guidelines
It is essential to clearly outline everything, from color swatches and typography palettes to shapes and the use of design elements.
What is the purpose of design? What is the philosophy behind this design?
These details can help users apply the design style consistently across media. It is a good idea for website design to include elements different from those used in print branding. Also, consider how they relate. Many designers use a different online typography scheme to mimic printed branding. This permits them to make the most of Google Fonts to Typekit.
If you are using substitution typefaces in your design strategy, take note of which ones.
Design guidelines should be clear and concise. H1 tags must always be 88 points long, while thumbnail images must always be 200×200 pixels. However, don’t give away too many details. It is crucial that team members can see the information quickly and be able to use it.
3. Voice and personality
Although writing style guidelines isn’t as enjoyable as the visual elements of a design, they are equally important.
The visuals can be affected by the descriptive writing style used for copy. This can influence the imagery used and elements like color and type. These elements all work together to develop a brand personality.
It is how the outside world identifies you.
A strong voice and personality are a part of the visual identity. Because users can identify design elements from other brands, they can quickly identify a good personality. Think Coca-Cola red and Disney’s signature font.
4. SEO Keywords
SEO might be the most talked about but the least enjoyable part of website design. Search engine optimization is something you should consider early on.
These keywords should be included in your brand language, descriptive language about design, and the design guide.
Urban Outfitters offers fun and well-designed keyword list in its brand guide. The clothing brand uses many keywords, but the most important ones are highlighted by color to make it simple for you to see them immediately.
A keyword list like this will help you keep the words you are trying to communicate at the top of your mind every time you see them. Copywriters will tell you that once a word is mentioned in a particular context, it sticks in your mind. This is exactly what the SEO keyword lists are supposed to do.
These keywords should be used as a guideline for design elements to ensure that the site design is relevant.
5. Styles with Pattern and Element
There are so many online mediums (not to mention the companies that design printed elements) that it is essential to have guides to help you make the most of them.
This applies to animated versions of logos, color schemes, patterns, and design elements like form fields and navigation.
These elements should be included in your design book. If you want your team to love you, you can create a pattern or element style guide online so users can quickly copy and paste elements.
6. Code Snippets
A website design guide should include many commonly used code snippets. These little bits of code can be used to create buttons, small animations, or slider effects. They also retain time by removing the need to enter details for every element.
This code can be used for everything, from blog posts to images. Bloggers can copy and paste the code block to create images.
Firefox provides design information for its logo and branding. Even if you don’t have a complete library of code snippets available, it is essential to provide basic information like where H1 through H4 can be found on pages in the website design and how to style buttons or images.
Leave a Reply