Drafting content guidelines

An attempt to create effective content guidelines for teams and organizations

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As a Product Team of One at Cryptlex, I took up the task of structuring our content and making it uniform.

A brand is always answering two questions. The first one internally facing: What do we believe? The second, externally: How do we behave? You must remain authentic to yourself, your core values, and what you stand for. If you’re not, people will sniff you out. But your brand must maintain cultural congruence — remaining relevant to the times, always evolving to inspire people at large. The answers to these two curiosities must always be aligned. – Brian Collins

After documentation, discussion with the team, we decided on Serious, Formal, Respectful, and Matter of fact dimensions for the content based on the NNGroup’s Tone of Voice framework.

The Cryptlex logo and the phrase 'license to chill'.

A graphic I created for the ‘Funny’ tone of voice. A wordplay on ‘license to kill’ and ‘license to chill’, and since Cryptlex offers ‘licensing’, it was meant to imply that Cryptlex is the ‘license to chill’. While I was intrigued with having a brand that is allowed to be humorous, I was also concerned about the potential for misinterpretation. The ‘license to chill’ example may not be understood by all audiences and is exclusive to a certain demographic.

A content designer, information designer, or similarly specialized person could do this better. However, since no one else in the team could have contributed to this, I scoured the internet and forums written by technical writers, to find some guidance. I leave these here for anyone who might need them in the future: