As a tech writer, you get used to a number of changes along the years, like migration to new standards and tools, company and product renaming, rebranding, merger and takeover, localising for a new language or region. Such changes affect the entire organisation. The decision comes from above and it is seen as a top-down process, so unfortunatelly not all departments get a share of the attention.

Usually, a new styleguide is announced, along with launching a new website, mission statement and promotional materials. When it finally comes, you browse through the new guide, eager to see what the new image and vision of the company is, and how this change is going to apply to your work. Alas, the new guide mostly contains instructions for Sales, Marketing and Web.

I have so rarely seen a plan to identify and analyse the content across an organisation, before a rebranding and renaming endeavor takes place. Only after the new look has been decided and dictated, teams such as Support and Documentation are asked to commit to a deadline for making the changes in their content. The fact that the products themselves (meaning Development and Localisation) would also need to plan some changes, often comes as a surprise too, and they have to start hunting for the sources of phantom bannners and messages in the last minute.

Some companies are fortunate enough to have conscientious teams, who try to prepare ahead when hearing about big changes. They think of their content inventory and determine which parts of it would actually need to be updated, translated or restyled, thus even saving their company some time and money. They would be ready to commit to the change and all they’d need would be the new styleguide.

The surprise is, even after asking to make sure the guide would contain the styling needed by the Documentation and other teams, you wouldn’t find anything more in it, than the specifications for the logo, new colour scheme and maybe some PDF cover samples. Everything else is for marketing materials, website, MS Word and PowerPoint templates.

How about the styles and layout of the Knowledge Base, FAQ portal, Manuals or User Guides, Help files, Data Sheets and Specifications, API Reference, user forum, tester portals, etc.?

Not only are the users going to wonder whether the content belongs to the same company, when facing most of the Support and Documentation materials, but also why it still looks and feels so like… last century.