ACCESS Design Coordination - Branding/style guide needs

Owned by Julie Ma (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Dec 22, 2022 by Dina Meek
3 min read

Lissie Fein, Andrew Pasquale, Julie Ma

7/16/22

For discussion, below is a list of items that could be included in the style guide to help to ensure consistency across all of our sites. Please feel free to add/edit!

  • Page width

  • Page margins

  • Root font size

  • Capitalization conventions

  • Conventions for use of All Caps

  • Conventions for Use of bold text

  • Column usage, column margins

  • Heading styles and alignment

  • Navigation styles- Primary, Secondary, Hover, Dropdown etc.

  • Side bar uses and treatment

  • Footer styles and alignment

  • Button styles (and hover state)

  • Paragraph spacing

  • Form styles

It would be better to have the form field labels on top of the fields for usability and I imagine for accessibility:

  • Bullet styles

  • Box styles

  • Table treatments, responsive table designs

  • accordion styles

  • Icon style

  • Link treatment (and hover state)

  • Tag treatment

  • Date format and timezone presentation

  • Responsive designs for menus and headers

  • Breakpoints for responsive designs 

  • colors (hex, pantone)

  • logos (ACCESS wide, ACCESS project/function, RP)

  • logo placement

  • menu placement

  • banner placement

  • track news placement

  • Helper text style and placement

  • page backgrounds - graphic elements/colors. Paralax conventions.

  • drop shadows settings, use of dropshadows

  • Treatment of screenshots ie https://metrics.access-ci.org/get_involved

  • Scope of branding/style guide: primary sites only, all researcher facing sites, developer facing sites?

  • breadcrumbs? Metrics use them but content only appears to be one level deep

  • accessibility requirements?

  • Nomenclature Consistency ie. Knowledge Base

From December 2022 with Q, Ltd. ACO development team for putting estimate together; from meetings with this team:

Notes on RFP:

  • Christine said most of what’s in the list of requirements is very standard; some are already being used at least on the ACO site and/or are in the initial style guide

  • Julie said the detail in the guide should actually be as detailed - rather than high-level - as possible

  • Developers said they are looking more for how to design/use various elements of the pages rather than what a full page might look like

    • JP: We do want to ensure the top banner and footer are identical, but that the middle sections can be different WHILE adhering to uniform styles

    • They don’t need code, per se, but they need a guide to style

  • My ACCESS is ready on the back end so we should be able to put that into the guide

    • Need to determine the selections/what’s in the drop-down list

    • Andrew says there is a list

    • Julie says they don’t need code for this, just what it would look like

  • Discussed News dropdown

    • ACO is OK with there being a universal dropdown that includes:

      • News

        • discussion on how to organize news to pull in from various sites, but also to be vetted for what shows up on the main site

        • The development team needs to decide how to manage the news that’s on the ACO site and also what’s on the Support news site

          • Discussed Support’s site being called “Announcements

      • Events - will be hosted on the Support site, but a dropdown could go there

  • Discussed Login

    • What would it look like and what are the dropdown items

      • Andrew says you’d have a universal login and from there it could be:

        • My ACCESS - your profile and account info

        • ACCESSonDemand - you can get to

  • Resource Providers

    • Perhaps “Resources” in the top nav

      • Team needs to decide where it will go

    • Clarified that we could link from the universal nav to a subpage on the ACO site - much like the current “About” page - that gives some general information and then provides links to over sites based on what the visitor is looking for

      • Allocations

      • user documentation

      • becoming a resource

      • metrics about resources

    • Could we share a high-fidelity mock-up with Ruth/RP Forum to show what the subpage would look like for feedback

    • We could also include - via feed - the RP list from either Allocations or Operations page