Style Guides are Important but Often Ignored


Style Guides are Important but Often Ignored

We began to refer to this living document as “a toolkit built in style guide form.” This achieved our goal to communicate our work…
– Mark Otto, creator of Bootstrap Framework

 

Style Guides are Important but Often Ignored

Recently at work, one of our websites was redesigned to be mobile responsive. It was developed by an outside company not using Bootstrap and so I knew I needed some documentation in order to update the site going forward.

Previously, the old site had no style guide and had 10 years of CSS styles written by various designers and developers.

So I asked for documentation. But it made me think back to all of the sites and projects I have built over the years. Guess how many style guides I have created or referenced? Zero. But why?

I think this was neglected because often projects are built so quickly there is no time left for documentation… especially if it is not a priority.

But I now realize any project that needs to last more than a year needs a style guide. 

This shift in focus will cause your projects to take more time and be slower to update but will ensure long term quality. The challenge will be explaining to business executives and clients why projects are more expensive and take longer to update.

Some style guide examples:



Written by: Jake Lett
Jake Lett is a B2B marketing consultant with over 15 years of experience in the digital marketing industry. He specializes in SEO, HubSpot, and PPC campaign management. Jake has a proven track record of helping businesses increase their online visibility and drive more traffic, leads and sales. He is a Certified Google Ads Specialist and a Certified HubSpot Developer.

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