When I was just starting out, one of my first roles was as a quality control supervisor at Goldman Sachs. I worked evening and night shifts, where much of my responsibility was reviewing reports and presentations against the company’s style guide. Every heading, every font, every chart placement had to align with the standards. It was repetitive, but also eye-opening. I began to see that consistency was not a cosmetic preference but an essential part of how a brand communicates trust and professionalism.
Later, when I moved into agency work, I noticed the same challenge repeating itself. Agencies would create beautifully crafted brand guides, often in the form of carefully designed PDFs. These guides were handed over to clients with the hope that their teams, freelancers, and new hires would follow them closely. But in practice, the task of ensuring compliance still fell on managers, senior designers, or whoever had the sharpest eye. It was a time-consuming process, prone to subjectivity, and often inconsistent.
That’s why the idea came to me. What if style guides could be more than documents? What if they could become tools, interactive systems that actually checked the work and gave clear, objective feedback? That idea became the starting point for Style Guide Match, a prototype I created to demonstrate how this might work.
While some large companies have internal systems for brand compliance, those tools are usually expensive and out of reach for smaller teams. Style Guide Match takes the same idea and makes it practical and accessible, so agencies, in-house teams, and even educators can benefit.
The tool is straightforward. You upload a design, whether it’s a mockup, a presentation, a marketing piece, or a web screen, and the app compares it to your brand guidelines. Instead of guesswork, you receive an instant compliance score along with detailed notes on typography, color use, layout, and logo placement. It takes the idea of the style guide off the shelf and puts it into action.
What excites me most about this is how practical it can be. For agencies, it means fewer late-night revisions before a client delivery. For in-house teams, it means freelancers and vendors can be held to the same standard without endless back-and-forth. For educators, it means students can practice working within real brand parameters, receiving feedback that is clear and objective.
Ultimately, Style Guide Match is both a prototype and an invitation. It’s a demonstration of what’s possible, and it opens the door for custom versions that can be branded, integrated, and scaled to fit the needs of real teams.
Explore the prototype here: Style Guide Match