Developing Visual Style Guidelines
Visual style guidelines make a team scalable. Without them, every new artist or outsource contractor brings their own interpretation of "the style," and after half a year of development, three visual languages live in the game simultaneously. With them—the art director stops being the only person holding the style in their head.
But poorly written guidelines are worse than no guidelines. "The style should be minimalist"—that's not a rule, that's interpretation. "Working range of roughness for inorganic surfaces: 0.3–0.7, exception—mirrors and ice"—that's a rule.
What Should Be in Proper Guidelines
Most documents called style guides are really just concept galleries with captions. That's not guidance, that's an inspiration board. Real production guidelines answer specific working questions.
Color system. Not just a palette—but usage rules. Which colors are background, which are used for accents, what never combines. For 3D—separately: Albedo ranges for different surface types (skin, metal, wood, stone), because physically correct PBR doesn't tolerate Albedo below 30 or above 240.
Typography. Fonts, size grids, hierarchy rules. If the game is localized—mandatory: how fonts behave with Cyrillic and CJK characters, whether there's a fallback.
Lighting rules. This is especially important for 3D. Lighting style is not mood, it's technical parameters: intensity range for directional light, use or prohibition of emissive materials for additional lighting, rules about ambient occlusion (baked vs. SSAO vs. GTAO), temperature of the key light source.
Rules for characters and props. Polygon budget by LOD levels. Maximum number of material slots. Required UV channels. Requirements for bone naming (if there's a rig).
Negative space rules. What's forbidden sometimes matters more than what's allowed. For example: "don't use more than three materials on one prop smaller than 1m," "avoid fully saturated colors (saturation > 90%) except for VFX elements."
Document Development Process
Work begins with an audit. If the project already has art assets—we analyze them: what works, what contradicts each other, what creates visual noise. This takes 1–2 days, but gives a real picture of visual style state.
After the audit—document structure composition for the specific project. A mobile game with hand-painted style and an AAA shooter with realistic PBR need different documents. There's no universal template.
Then—a draft with examples. Each rule is illustrated: do / don't with visual examples right in the document. Text without examples doesn't work—people interpret differently.
Tools: Figma for an interactive document with components and links, Notion or Confluence if the team already uses these systems, sometimes a PDF for a fixed version for outsource contractors.
The final document goes through validation: a new artist without project background makes a test asset according to guidelines. If the result matches the style without additional explanations—the document works.
Timeline
Simple guidelines for a small team (10–20 pages, basic rules): 1–2 weeks. Full style guide for a medium or large project covering all art disciplines—4–8 weeks, including approval iterations.
Cost is calculated after analyzing team size, state of existing assets, and document scope.