Styleguides for web vs. events
Sep 21, 2009 In Design By Tim AidlinIf you've ever created a styleguide that has to work for both web and print, you probably know how challenging it can be—print and web are very different mediums, with very different restrictions. When you create a styleguide that works for both, you do double duty.
Take the styleguide we created for PDC09. It had to work for online audiences who learn about the event via the website and had to take into account the posters, banners, registration booth, PowerPoint slides, and even the colors of the carpet in the “big room” where we host exhibitors at the site.
This made even basic choices difficult. Our designs had to account for the restrictions of the web: users’ operating systems, browsers, screen-resolutions, plug-ins, and bandwidth. But they also had to account for the restrictions of print: fonts had to be available to conference attendees and vendors who produce the material, not just for online audiences. Color palettes had to work in the corporeal world, not just online.
I'm curious whether you think there are huge differences in creating styleguides for web work versus print work. If so, what do you think those differences are? How do you get around the restrictions of the two mediums? Let us know below! And be sure to follow on Twitter at @mixonline to keep up-to-date with our latest opinions, labs, and experiments.
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3 Comments so far. You should leave one, too.
I’m not a designer, but hopefully a useful observation – that htere is a huge chasm between producing a style guide and producing practical implementations of the style guide in the form of document templates, web designs etc.
Twice now our (very) small firm has retained designers to come up with revisions to our corporate style, including linked document and web site designs. The design bit has been OK each time, but in both cases the designers have delivered little more than a PNG of what the designs would look like in both print and on the web. Turning these into working documents has involved considerable effort, and in each case triggered fairly significant revisions to the initial design ideas.
Not sure what the ‘proper’ way to do things is, but suspect that producing the style guide should be one of the last things you do (once you’ve produced real artifacts not before). In which case I would imagine it is relatively easy to simply document what you did.
I see your point and absolutely agree that there can be a chasm between producing a good style guide and producing practical implementations of the guide. However, I have to disagree that the style guide should be one of the last things you do. In fact, I think creating a solid, flexible, encompassing style guide is one of the first things to do when taking on a massive project like an event, as it serves as the one document from which everything flows.
To start, I find that including a strong vision statement and personas of our target audience(s) greatly helps focus the team around the same ideas, goals and aesthetics. It’s once we have an solid idea of what we’re saying, and to whom we’re speaking that we can decide on the particulars and try to understand/determine how they translate across the board.
It’s precisely the potential for disconnect and “translation” of the guide that makes it vitally important that the style guide encompass as many as possible the scenarios you outline above. The guide, however, must also be flexible enough to provide the various designers of these materials (web, kiosks, posters, etc …) the freedom to work within the guide and still produce amazing products/designs.
Thanks for leaving a comment. I hope you found the Opinion useful. I’ll be writing more about process, including User Personas, in forthcoming articles.
@Glawrie
I think the simple answer is to ensure that your design agency produces working designs.
Sure, their initial concet designs might be all in Indesign or Illustrtor, but they then need to deliver MS Word and HTML templates with CSS, etc.
That’s something we deal with where I work – our designers have that round-trip back to our technical folks to ensure what’s designed can actually be implemented given other requirements from the client.