Design Guide

A guide to building your own Style Guide.

This resource is intended to help with the initial conversations while developing a Style Guide. It covers some of the basic topics and ideas for creating standards within a department on how information will be presented to both public and internal facing audiences.

What is a Style Guide?

A style guide helps Tableau Desktop users create consistent user experiences, visualizations that communicate effectively, and a visual language that is a mark of quality. Information presented to users should be quick, easy and intuitive. Data narratives should come through loud and clear. Lastly, dashboards should be recognizable as quality and professional representatives of the State of Louisiana.

Current Resources Available

The Secretary of State is the custodian of the State Flag and Seal artwork.  In addition, that agency provides information on fonts, pantone colors, etc. used by state agencies.  Usually, each agency has a Communications Officer that keeps the information on file for media, or just such use.  OTS, for instance, has a detailed Branding Guide and Accessibility Guides to use when developing applications, documents, etc. Contact your respective Communications Officers for guidelines that your agency may follow as well as official art assets that may be available.

Each governor changes the fonts on letterhead used on documents along with an occasional tweak to the state seal.  OTS Production Support Services (which includes State Printing) can be a good resource to insure that the correct fonts and assests are used.

Tableau Exchange

Tableau Accelerators are pre-built dashboards designed to help you get a jumpstart on data analysis. Tailored to specific industries and enterprise applications, Accelerators are built with sample data that you can swap out for your own data, allowing you to discover insights with minimal setup.
Learn more about accelerators from Tableau's Website.

Extensions let you add unique features to dashboards or directly integrate them with applications outside Tableau. Adding extensions is easy; you incorporate them into dashboard layouts just like other dashboard objects.Extensions expand dashboard functionality with the help of web applications created by third-party developers. If you're a developer and want to create your own extensions, see the Tableau Extensions API documentation on GitHub.
Learn more about dashboard extensions from Tableau's Website.

Use custom vizzes in your worksheets.

Tableau Desktop has dozens of supported connectors you can choose from. You can also find more connectors built by partners in the Tableau Exchange.
Learn more about connectors from Tableau's Website.