Style guides as a model for mapping cultural values to design decisions
Over the summer, I had the opportunity to do contract work for a Fortune 500 company. I was very quickly oriented to their values and corresponding design implications thanks to a very robust, 70+ page style guide and accompanying website. By familiarizing myself with the guide first, many of the easiest design decisions were made for me, and I could focus on bringing more nebulous aspects of the design to be usable and appropriate for the product.
Although I’m not at liberty to share that guide publicly, there is no shortage of style guides that are just as impactful and clear in what they convey. (source)
Here’s an interesting one: a man as a brand!
Even the Swedish Army has a brand manual!
In my opinion, the most effective style guides not only highlight proper implementation of design elements, but the connection that design elements have to company values. This was present in the style guide of the company I worked for, and it made every design decision easier.
How could something like a style guide be created for the design of culture-focused digital interfaces?
Distilling a millennia-long culture into something like a style guide is probably impossible, and not necessarily appropriate. However, if something like a style guide could be considered a bilingual (bicultural) dictionary, perhaps there would be some merit in its implementation.
Of course, a cultural style guide would have to be structurally distinct and less prescriptive to allow for interpretation, but strong enough to be a foundational resource for design decisions.
