This piece is a style guide created in my WRA 420- Content Strategy, taught by Dr. Liza Potts, course for the Michigan Secretary of State. What makes this piece unique in comparison to the other pieces included in this portfolio is the fact that it was a collaborative piece of work as opposed to one created exclusively by myself. In fact, all the projects created for this class were done so collaboratively, which is meant to mirror how work happens outside the classroom in industry jobs.
The planning process for this piece was pretty seamless given the fact that I was working with a team of amazing individuals. We brainstormed together about what we wanted to achieve collectively with the project and then divided the work amongst the five members. The sections I worked on were the sections titled “Tone” and “Languages Elements.” In both of the sections I mainly hone in on what would be the written elements of the style guide, always keeping in mind who the target audience for the website was.
This was my first contribution to a professional writing document and although I’m still proud of the work we produced, there are some things I would change if I were to revise it. The first thing I would like to add would be an accessibility section. In it we would outline rules to ensure this site was accessible to a broader audience than it currently is. Some of these would include making sure that all images have appropriate descriptions and alt text. Then in already existing sections such as “Design Elements” we could include the ways in which these captions need to be formatted as well as a reminder that paragraphs need to be short so to best accommodate for people with e-readers.