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 The more of these blogs I write, the more I become aware of consistent themes. Creating the content your audience wants (and not necessarily what you want to tell them) is one of the most consistent.

 As noted in this article about how to create more effective customer education content, there are a number of ways to figure out exactly what that is, including online forums, customer surveys, or even from your own technical support staff.

 Regardless of how you get it, delivering content your customers want and need will go a long way in ensuring the success of your quick-reference materials.

 The whole point of a quick-reference guide is to make information easily and readily accessible, so be sure it’s simple to understand.

 Avoid huge blocks of text as much as possible Instead, use visual elements such as screenshots with markup, icons, or product photos — and just enough text to ensure your points are clear.

 Keep it to one or two pages. Don’t try to cover everything from your full user manual. Think about it — a quick-reference guide that needs a table of contents probably isn’t all that quick.

 Choose the most important information to accomplish a particular task or that otherwise conveys what you want to show. Boil down complex concepts into their most basic form.

 Know what to leave in and what to leave out. Remember, you can always create another quick-reference guide to cover other important topics.

 If your quick-reference guide isn’t visually appealing and easy to follow, your users won’t find it useful.

 You don’t have to create a total work of art to make a good quick reference guide. Sometimes a simple screenshot annotated with arrows, text, etc. can be enough to get someone the information they need.

 I feel like I can’t emphasize this enough: Your quick-reference guide just won’t be as effective, engaging, and useful as it can be without good images, icons, screenshots, or other visual elements.

 Images draw the eye and help provide anchor points to your content, helping your users quickly and easily identify important points of information.

 In fact, our Value of Visuals research found that people learn better with images and text vs. text alone.

 Infographic showing that 58% of people believe they remember information better when it's visual, that 67% of people complete tasks better when instructions are provided with visuals or video, and that employees absorb information 7% faster when communications are visual.

 You can learn all about how valuable visual communication can be with this awesome infographic.

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 And, have you ever heard the terms a picture is worth a thousand words? Well, it turns out the best way to show something is to actually SHOW it.

 A good image can convey a ton of information and help reduce the text density of your content and make it more user-friendly.

 Our friends at Venngage have some more information on the importance of visual content.

 Quick-reference guide dos and don’ts

 Not all quick-reference guides will be as simple as the one I created. Some will need more text, others will need more images. Some will need more complex layouts. Depending on the subject, it may be longer.

 There is a wide range of types of and uses for quick-reference guides, and it would be impossible to cover them all here. But, there are some common dos and don’ts that are pretty universal:

 Quick-reference guide dos and don'ts. Text is repeated below the image.

 Do

 Use a sensible, easy-to-follow layout, with clear headings and subheadings as needed.

 Make it stand on its own. Users shouldn’t have to look in your manual to understand your quick-reference guide.

 Cram in too much information. You’re not trying to fit your whole user manual into this one guide.

 Templates are edited in the same interface where they are created. To edit the design of a guide, simply navigate back to the Templates section within Global Settings, and click the edit icon next to the template that you would like edit. This will re-open the design interface allowing you to make changes.

 When changes are made to a template, the status of any guide that uses the template will now display “Needs Review”. Note that the guide status (disabled, draft, staging, or public) hasn’t actually changed. This is just a notification alert. If a guide is public, it will remain live. The list of templates will update to show you the number of guides that have been impacted by the change.

 To review the guides, click on the “Show Guides” option, and scroll to the guide you wish to review. When you select the guide to open it, the guide menu will open with a prompt alerting you to the template change and inviting you to preview the impact of the changes on this particular guide.

 The guide will open showing you a preview of the guide with the template updates applied. You can compare the changes against the old version of the guide by mousing over the “Old Version” text in the alert under "Content/Design". If you are satisfied that the template changes have not caused any issues with the guide, click the “Save” button to apply the changes. This will apply the new template changes, and return the guide to its previous status. So if the guide was public, then the changes are immediately published. Note that for public guides the old versions will continue to be shown to visitors until the changes are reviewed and approved.

 Find a style guide template that you like and customize it for your brand to save time (and money) on creating your document from scratch.

 Find a style guide template that you like and customize it for your brand to save time (and money) on creating your document from scratch.

 When it comes to branding, we all know that consistency is key, but in order to achieve that you need a solid style guide.

 This is especially true when you create a lot of branded content or work with many designers.

 However—there's a problem:

 Creating your guidelines can take a really long time—often long weeks or months.

 That's why it's helpful to jump start your style guide creation with a great, design-ready template.

 Thing about it—you have to figure out what to include, then lay out the content, design the book, write descriptions and annotations—the process can be very time consuming.

 Using template to create a brand style guide.

 Save yourself time and effort by customizing one of the templates from my list that fits your needs best.

 Whether you’re looking for an InDesign, Photoshop, illustrator, Keynote, Powerpoint or even a GoogleSlides template—I got you covered.

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 Looking to creating a simple style guide or a comprehensive brand guidelines? In landscape or portrait orientation?

 No matter what your preferences are, I include on my list something for everyone.

 At the same time I also make sure that all templates are well designed.

 Check out my list of 50+ best style guide templates to download in 2021.

 I organized them into 10 categories that feature top 5 templates in each one—making it a list of 50 templates total.

 PS. If you want to learn how to create a style guide—check out my YouTube video.

 In the first category I feature just simple one-page templates, also called brand boards or style sheets—they will get you started with the basics.

 A good brand board is an absolute must-have for any designer!

 They simply show your client every element of their brand—all nicely presented on a single page document.

 Brand boards are important because they help convey brand attributes, personality, and style at a glance.

 When you view style sheets you can see every element of a brand on a single document—that's what makes it easy to access and use.