If you have a website that gets updated frequently, or if many people will be involved in maintaining or updating it, a web design style guide is an excellent idea to have in place.
It makes sure that everyone who interacts with your site is on the same page. And it understands how to keep everything looking consistent. But what exactly is a web design style guide?
What exactly does it entail? And how do you go about making one for yourself? These are the questions we intend to address right here. So, before you ask: what is branding, let’s know more about the current issue.
Publicize You with the Brand
If you’ll be creating a style guide about your website or for someone else’s, the same principle holds: you must first assess what the brand stands for. This entails knowing your target audience, understanding the company’s values.
And it’s having a solid idea of how this should be represented visually. The company has previously conducted A/B testing for specific designs. So, now is the time to use that data to create a more robust and practical style guide.
Choose Colors
Colors will be essential to consider as you evaluate the brand. If the company already has a palette in place, that’s great. In the style guide, including the hex codes for the colors. You can use brand logo design to evaluate the brand.
Make sure to categorize this information into text, links, hover links, backgrounds, buttons, and so on. Make it clear which colors should use in which places.
Choose & Identify Typography
Together with colors, you must specify which fonts should be used (and where they should be used). Identify the font names, sizes, and line-height in your web design style guide. This makes it incredibly simple for future designers to recreate the appropriate look of your site.
Create a Photoshop template with these elements set as presets or identified as a note within the file. You should also include logos with various backgrounds, including transparent ones. Thus, your logo will look great regardless of the experience.
Create a Content Grid
One more thing you should include in your web design style guide is a content grid. This is an excellent method for determining how pages and blog posts should format. They display where images and graphics should place among the text.
This is critical for understanding how your content should space out. Some of this can now handle by blog and page templates. Even so, including that information in your style guide is still a good idea.
Get Photo Specifications
Another option is to specify photo specifications. Many websites, for example, will apply filters or effects to images used in blog posts. You want to ensure that whoever manages your site’s content understands how to keep everything looking consistent.
So, you should include these details in your web design style guide. Determine the specifications that each image should adhere to, such as image height, width, color filters, opacity, and whether or not the text should be added.
If you want to include text on your graphics, make sure to include the font, style, size, and color specifications (as mentioned above).
