Whether you’re a web developer, designer, or content creator, having access to reliable web style guide examples and resources is essential for creating effective and engaging websites. You should aim to create websites that adhere to the latest industry standards in terms of coding practices, accessibility guidelines, and general design principles.
Fortunately, there are plenty of online style guides and resources that many brands publish for free that you can seek inspiration from.
In this complete guide, we will list more than a hundred examples of the best style guides and related web resources that you can use for your inspiration and design process.
What is a Style Guide?
A style guide is a set of standards and guidelines for the design and development of websites. It serves as a reference for designers and developers to ensure consistency and usability across a website. A well-crafted style guide can also aid in communication between team members and improve the overall user experience.
An effective web style guide should cover a wide range of topics, including layout, typography, colour, imagery, and branding. It should also provide guidelines for the use of interactive elements such as forms, buttons, and navigation.
Besides, a web style guide should take into consideration accessibility and responsive design principles to ensure that the website is usable for all users regardless of their device or abilities.
Top Style Guides Examples and Resources 2024
There are many resources available for creating and using web style guides. Below are some of the best style guides available to access publicly.
There are many resources available for creating and using web style guides. Below are some of the best web style guides available, including design systems, design patterns, pattern library
Material Design by Google
Google’s Material design system is intended to assist your design teams in creating top-notch digital experiences for a variety of platforms, including Android, iOS, Flutter, and the web.
MailChimp Brand Identity and Design System
This guide provides a detailed look at MailChimp’s brand identity and design system, including its logo, typography, and colour palette. It also includes guidelines for using their brand on the web and in print.
Atlassian Design System
Atlassian has a dedicated website for its design system with detailed design language guidelines for the entire process of designing, developing, and delivering. Check out their detailed guides to components and patterns from the page.
Medium Brand Style Guidelines
Medium’s brand and logo usage guidelines page presents its assets and outlines rules to use its logo, wordmark and symbol for communicating its brand.
GitHub Primer Design System
GitHub’s Primer is an open-source style guide that covers Components, design guidelines and tooling for GitHub’s design system. It also includes guidelines for using GitHub’s branding on the web.
Shopify Polaris Design System
Shopify, one of the most popular eCommerce platforms, has its own design system, which guides how developers build high-quality and consistent user experiences.
Check out their design system, which includes design guidance, code libraries, development opinions, and detailed API documentation on how to build user experiences for the Shopify admin.
Wix Design System
Wix has made its design system available here and is used by developers looking to build native Wix apps distributed through the Wix App Market (check out Wix website examples here).
You can find all Wix’s reusable React components and resources on their design system page.
Bootstrap
Bootstrap is a popular front-end framework that provides a set of CSS and JavaScript tools for building responsive websites. It includes a comprehensive style guide that covers everything from typography and forms to navigation and buttons.
Salesforce Lightning Design System
Salesforce’s Lightning Design System is a collection of design guidelines and resources for building web applications. It includes a style guide that covers layout, typography, and colour, as well as guidelines for using Salesforce’s branding on the web.
The BBC Global Experience Language
The BBC’s Global Experience Language is a set of design and development guidelines for creating consistent and usable websites.
The UX&D system of BBC covers various topics, including layout, typography, and accessibility.
Audi Brand Appearance Guides
See the basic elements that set Audi’s brand in this detailed style guide, where they go into details of their layout structure, imagery, typography, illustrations, icons, animations, and more.
Web Style Guides for your Inspiration
In conclusion, web style guides are a vital resource for designers and developers to seek inspiration for their own work.
They cover a wide range of useful design elements, including layout, logos, typography, colour, imagery, and branding. Most of them also take into consideration accessibility and responsive design principles to ensure that the website is usable for all users regardless of their device or abilities.
Which one is your favourite style guide? Tweet us and let us know if we have missed any of your favourites on this list.
