The importance of guidelines and standards
Most organisations and agencies have style guides that cover the use of their logo and other graphic elements including reports, business card, stationery design and webpage layout. These are useful documents from a branding perspective, but they generally don’t cover specific forms design requirements and this often results in inconsistencies across suites of forms.
Forms play an important role in representing an organisation and it is vital that they portray a professional and consistent image. Forms design guidelines and standards are important to ensure a strong and unified corporate image is projected. They will also assist with the:
- timely implementation of new initiatives
- development of new forms and revision of current forms, and
- quality of designs.
Forms design guidelines and standards can cover both paper and web forms and include elements such as:
- page layout details
- position of the logo, form title, form number and revision date
- heading hierarchy
- font attributes
- line weights
- fields, labels and tick box dimensions and position
- colours and visual elements
- standard wording used within your forms
- logical sequencing, and
- input and formatting requirements.
With standards in place it is easier to maintain a high quality of design regardless of who is undertaking the design of new forms or changes to existing forms.
If you haven’t already done so, we recommend you develop and document your form design guidelines. We can help you with this process or, if you prefer, we can develop your guidelines for you.
Contact Perform today on 02 6162 0618.