Living style guides: Make looking good easy

A "living" style guide uses an actual library of frontend assets instead of existing as a static PDF. Living style guides can bring consistency, agility, and many other benefits to an organization's web apps, but there are potential pitfalls. Shane Russell melds dev-community wisdom with a firsthand account of implementing a living style guide across a suite of web apps at a health provider.

A living style guide can be a powerful tool in developing consistently good-looking apps and an effective communication channel between often disconnected teams like designers and developers. However, it can also be a tangled mess, where the slightest change might have a butterfly effect on an unseen corner of an application. Shane Russell explores techniques to build an effective living style guide and avoid the pitfalls of poorly organized CSS. These techniques range from detailed CSS and Sass advice to general tips on making a style guide your teammates will love using. Shane also highlights how to propel the adoption of a living style guide in an organization. By the end of the session, attendees will be able to convince their organization to say yes to a living style guide and then build it so effectively that they’ll be glad they did.