From 2015 onwards, I co-wrote Yelp’s first ever in-house style guide and brand guidelines. I’ve co-owned and developed each iteration since, including Yelp’s UX writing guidelines and design principles.
Research & Development
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Research & Development *
Brand history
A large part of the process was to account for employee institutional knowledge and the existing journey the brand had been on up to that point. We looked at how execs and core teams feel about the brand, what the early voice was like and why, as well as the history behind the look and logo. We used the company mission, core site and brand elements, as well as employee values, to create the base for version one.
Audience
We dove deep into audience data—from demographics, psychographics, perception, segmentation, and beyond. We asked what problems Yelp was solving for the dual audience of B2B and B2C and how that shaped Yelp as a brand.
Output
The core output included documentation showcasing the voice timeline, branding history, key influences from the product on voice, audience details, and directional analysis on trending keywords and sentiments from employees.
We learned it was essential to include core teams and key stakeholders in this process for buy-in on the final book across the board.
One in-house style guide for grammar, syntax, writing pitfalls, and more.
An early iteration of UX copy best practices.
Version 1 of Yelp’s brand guidelines
Voice, logo, & design systems and channel/media guidance
UX/UI & Marketing
We then needed to regroup with Product, as the app and site underwent a branding refresh. This allowed us to explore the brand and voice in more depth—we had the core elements of who we are, where we came from, and how we looked at that point. With Product, we dove into more personality, media, and channel specifics.
Sprint process
Next we held a sprint-like process to gather expertise from across the org to input on color, UX design systems, persona, voice, style, photography, and illustration, among other things. This helped us build out more robust documentation in tandem with Product Design, who were building a new design system.
The core output of this sprint included updated brand guidelines to more closely align with Product, version one of a full design system, and more robust UX copy guidelines, which I later expanded with the new UX writer team. I then partnered with Product to develop their design principles guidelines, which mirrored marketing’s.
Version 2 of Yelp’s brand guidelines
Version 1 of Yelp’s UX writing guidelines
Updated style guide (to accommodate Content Marketing needs)
Design principles guidelines
Living brand documents
In late 2021 the Yelp Creative shifted to a stronger in-house brand agency model so, to account for the bolder upcoming work, the team refreshed the brand guidelines. I partnered with design to update the current brand book, develop team principles and guidelines, and build the new Yelp Creative and Brand site. Work to expand the living guidelines is ongoing as we expand to new channels and accommodate needs.
