May 2003

Stylish Communications

Style guides are an important—yet often overlooked—part of any communications program.

By Chris Zender

Take a moment and think about a brand or product that you admire. Chances are, the company behind the brand uses a variety of mediums—such as websites, radio or TV commercials, or print collateral—to communicate its message to consumers. Successful customer-facing communication programs inspire consumers to think about their unique brand no matter what the marketing medium. To achieve that goal, marketing executives understand that a consistent style, tone, look, and feel of a company's messaging is critical. And the key to consistency is a comprehensive style guide.

An integral tool for every project

A well-developed style guide is far more than a lengthy ode to punctuation and gramMarch Indeed, the document is an editor, writer, or marketing professional's best friend, answering questions about everything from when to use a serial comma to where to place a search box on a Web page. Moreover, it serves as an integral tool for creating user consistency, growing a customer base, and strategically extending your brand. Ideally, you should begin developing a style guide during the exploration phase of any project. There's no better use for the valuable information you've gathered about target audience, company culture, competitors' communication programs, and more. If that data serves as the basis for your project's style guide, you won't lose sight of the goals of your communication program—or the best means to achieve them.

Myriad rewards for your investment

Whether you modify an existing style guide for individual projects or create a new one from scratch, you'll be rewarded for your efforts. A comprehensive style guide can help you optimize your marketing program by…

1. Providing a framework for a consistent user experience. Readers expect and appreciate consistency in all types of communications. A style guide allows content creators and designers to make uniform decisions about the navigation elements of a website, the format for specific articles in a magazine, the overall tone of an editorial program, and much more.
2. Specifying all official editorial and graphical rules. In a multichannel marketing program, even the tiniest details count. A style guide provides consistent answers to nitpicky editorial questions about grammar and punctuation, as well as critical design elements such as font style and size, color palette, and image format.
3. Ensuring that existing and new team members are on the same page. A style guide is a template that enables all team members—both in-house staffers and freelancers—to quickly learn the nuances of a project. In addition to ensuring constancy in goals and objectives, a style guide helps streamline efficiencies during the implementation stage of a project.
4. Creating brand cohesion. It can be challenging for a company to establish a coherent personality across a variety of mediums. A detailed style guide helps translate brand tenets and company values into tangible copy and images that are appropriate for each marketing format.
5. Documenting the history and progress of your communications. A style guide is a living document that can—and should—be used to track the decisions made while developing a communications project. Changes in business objectives or marketing direction may necessitate a new communication style. Documenting these changes—and the reasons behind them—provides a record for future discussions.

About the author:

Christine Zender is the editorial director at Tendo Communications.