Your styleguide stinks

James Stone
Jul 25, 2017 · 2 min read

The internet is littered with ton’s of people talking about styleguides. And I say, who cares! It seems like one floats across designer or hacker news on an almost weekly basis. The sad news, I hate to break it to you, is that most people don’t care about your styleguide. Not at all. Not even for a second.The internet is littered with ton’s of people talking about styleguides. And I say, who cares! It seems like one floats across designer or hacker news on an almost weekly basis. The sad news, I hate to break it to you, is that most people don’t care about your styleguide. Not at all. Not even for a second.

Here’s why:

  • You gotta get beyond the colors. No one cares.
  • Don’t just post some icons. Don’t just say something obvious like, these icons should be black.
  • You gotta get beyond posting fonts. Fonts! Who cares.
  • Go beyond the logo and how it is used. No one cares about your logo.

And maybe that last one stings a bit.

Now this might sound harsh and I get it. You wear your heart on your sleeve sometimes when you put your design out in the world.

This is the real world of fast paced web development.

To just create a styleguide that resembles print brand guidelines (similar to the above example) is a waste of time. That is because unlike print, where you can change everything willy-nilly, for the web you want a more regimented and consistent output. Also engineering time is crazy expensive.

First off, the logo isn’t going to be dropped all over the place.

It might only end up in one place, on the top left of your app. And maybe there is a variation for a mobile format. That would be way more useful than describing every situation in which the logo could be used. I would say for me on average, I spend maybe 10 minutes total dealing with the logo. Which is why you won’t find it in the styleguides that I create.

And trust me, I love, love, looove me a good logo.

What would make a styleguide more useful?

In short, understanding the problem better.

As designers we are master problem solvers. And engineers are master problem solvers as well. But we approach the problem from different angles. We have different processes. We also arrive at a different set of deliverables.

In design, it is the design document. In engineering, it is the production site.

The part in the middle. That is where things get interesting…


Originally published at James Stone.

    James Stone

    Written by

    Design Systems Engineering — ZURB Foundation Specialist

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