Style guides
Strong brands have a strong written identity. They (almost) always have a content or copy style guide with clear tone, voice, and general dos and don'ts for certain words and phrases. Existing style guides are living, breathing documents that need respectful care and consideration before changes are introduced. If a style guide isn't provided, I'll make one.
Due to privacy concerns, actual guides cannot be shared publicly, but I'm always eager to discuss them in person.
High Flying Foods
What: This Sausalito-based hospitality firm partners with chefs to open restaurants in airports across the country. This process starts with writing a manuscript-like proposal.
Problem: Each restaurant pitch has to meet certain criteria and be exhaustive in details for everything from signage, to menu plans, to staffing schedule, to design of the floor tiles.
Fix: To help the team with consistency of their proposals, I created an internal style guide for my editing needs and for the team to use on future projects. It included everything from basic punctuation guidelines to a glossary so they spelled Schezwan the same way every time.
Result: Less time spent editing for their copyeditor (me), more consistent brand messaging from their lead team, professional final proposals worth multi-million dollar contracts.
Team: project manager
Walmart International
What: Despite being the largest employer in the US, Walmart did not have a UX-based style guide for the international team when I started. Additionally, the various teams were working in silos, and that contributed to inconsistencies across the products.
Problem: When Covid hit, Walmart was unprepared for the volume of customers who converted to their e-commerce sites all at once. The international team ran and felt like a late-stage startup. They were using a marketing style guide from the US and it didn’t address many of the UX-specific needs like checkout, error messages, and unhappy-path directional copy.
Fix: When I started, the international team was about to embark on a platform migration. This audit was the ideal time to create a style guide for each team, and then make content decisions collectively when inconsistencies arose. I led the team in this initiative, creating opportunities for ownership from UX teammates, project managing a timely execution, and tracking updates for continued improvement.
Result: A comprehensive and hard-working style guide the team could use as their north star on tone, voice, branding and product questions.
Team: All nine members of the Walmart International content design team.
Munchery, Brandless, and Stockwell
What: At every startup I’ve worked for, I was the first writer hired on the team, usually at the B stage of funding — tasked with quickly cranking out all the necessary content, including marketing, UX, internal comms, executive comms, and social posts.
Problem: Each of these companies was so young, no style guide existed. Yet, this tool would be needed and prove valuable as each company began to rapidly scale.
Fix: I built my own style guide for each of these companies, making decisions for each brand accordingly, and sharing these with the wider teams as needed.
Result: It set a standard for these young startups trying to create a brand with consistent messaging, voice, and tone. Ultimately, future funding wasn’t there and these style guides never had a chance to grow.
Team: me
