Is A Style Guide Really Important?

As a ui/ux designer, I’m sure you must have heard the term style guide or you must have made use of a style guide at a point in time. If you haven’t heard about a style guide then this article is for you. Also, if you have made use of a style guide at any point in your design but you still want to know its importance, then this article is for you as well.

What exactly is a style guide? A style guide is basically a document that outlines the visual and design elements of a product. This usually includes typography, color palettes, button styles, input fields, grid style, iconography, imagery, shadow style and other design components. A style guide helps to ensure consistency across your design. In simple words, a style guide is a collation of all your necessary and important elements that are used across your design, multiple times.

What makes up a style guide? Now that we know what a style guide is, there are a couple of things that makes up a style guide. These can vary depending on exactly what you need but, some things are constant. In a style guide, we have typography style. This consist of your typical typography category which are; display text, headline text, title text, label text and body text. Your typography style should be tailored having the type of design, the font family suitable for your design as well as text sizes in mind. A good guide to understand typography better is Material Design. https://m3.material.io/styles/typography/overview

Another thing that makes up a style guide is a color style. Color is very important in any design and should be created to suit exactly what the product is about. Personally, I like to have 5 major categories for my color style namely; primary color, secondary color, tertiary color, neutral color and neutral variant color. These 5 major color categories will have their derivative ranging from as low as 2 shades down to 13 shades. This is dependent on how solid and detailed you want your style guide to be. This might sound like a lot but trust me, once you get the hang of it studying and using Material Design, https://m3.material.io/styles/color/the-color-system/key-colors-tones you will understand color styles.

Icons are so important and highly used in any and every design and they are definitely an important part of a style guide. Icons play such an important role in communicating to users. Having icons or an icon pack as part of a style guide is very easy. There are so many plugins and resources available to get the best icons and icon pack. As a designer, you don’t need to create your icon style yourself but you can if you want to and even specialize as an iconographer. My current favorite icon pack is Hero Icons. https://heroicons.com/

We all know buttons are everywhere in a design and they come in different forms. It is important that a button style is created and saved as a component with variants. If you make use of Figma to design, you’ll know about the boolean and instance swap property. This feature makes your button style minimal and clean. For a button style, a primary button is needed, a secondary button is needed and a text link button is needed as well. Button components also come in variants; default state, hover state, pressed state and disabled state. Buttons comprises of colors, texts, icons and sometimes shadows. So you see how all the styles are coming together right?

Another component that makes up a style guide is an input field. Input field is a component that basically allows users input or type in information required. Input fields come in their variants as well namely; default state, focused state, active state, entered state, default state, valid/success state and error state. An input field comprises of texts, colors, icons (if needed) and sometimes shadows. An input field is very crucial in a design and is used frequently. Asking a user to create an account by typing in their name, email, phone number and the likes is only possible because of an input field. A search field is also a good example of an input field.

Shadow styles are very important because different things in a design require different shadow intensity and elevation. Card components also make great use of shadows. A good guide to understanding shadows while designing is Material Guide. https://m3.material.io/styles/elevation/overview.

Grid styles are also very important in a style guide as they contribute to consistency in designing. Grid styles are helpful in alignment generally. When designing, it is important that all items are properly placed and aligned accurately. Similar items need to maintain the same alignment across a design and grid styles help with this.

There are other things that make up a style guide but for me, these are my staples.

Importance of a style guide

1. A style guide is important in product design because it provides a consistent visual language and sets design standards for a design/product.
2. A style guide ensures consistency in the look and feel of a design/product across all its different parts and touchpoints.
3. A style guide helps to enhance a brand’s recognition and credibility in the sense that users become familiar with the brand’s consistency in colors, text sizes, buttons, input fields, e.t.c
4. A style guide makes it easier for designers to work on a design/product by providing them with clear guidelines and design elements.
5. A style guide also streamlines the design process and saves time in the long run by eliminating the need for repeated decision making and reducing the chances of design inconsistencies.

Overall, a style guide is important for good design practice. It might not be necessary if you are just designing for fun or for a personal project but it is an important part of your design process. Imaging having to check the colors you are using while designing over and over again or having to figure out what typography you used as your display? That sounds really stressful and time consuming.

Now the question I want to ask you the reader is do you think having a style guide is important or you can do without it? I’ll like to hear your opinions on this so i definitely look forward to your comments.

Thank you for reading this far.