NYU Libraries LibGuides Style Manual

A consistent layout and design strategy helps keep our guides recognizable, cohesive, and accessible. Certain layout and design decisions have been set as NYU LibGuides system defaults or written into the style sheets.

• The color scheme is written into the NYU LibGuides style sheet.
• The system default font is NYU Perstare and the default size for normal (non-heading) text is 14pt. For accessibility purposes, do not reduce the font size below 14pt for any text.

Tips for maintain the NYU Libraries branding:

• Do:
  • Use the format options dropdown in the rich text editor to select heading levels
  • Do use the "Remove Formatting" tool in the rich text editor to strip out external styling code from any copy/pasted content
• Don't:
  • manually add text colors using the Rich Text Editor tool
  • manually change font or text size

• A guide consists of pages
  • Pages can have sub-pages
    • Pages and sub-pages consist of boxes
      • Boxes consist of two categories of content:
        • Rich text
        • Assets
          • Database
          • Link
          • Media / Widget
          • Book from the Catalog
          • Document / File
          • RSS Feed
          • Guide List
          • Poll
          • Google Search

Use the Side Navigation Layout

The side navigation layout is our system default and should be used for all guides. When it comes to accessibility and device responsiveness, side navigation (which limits the number of columns on a page to two) is a better solution than top-tabbed navigation.

You can also choose to show sub page level navigation and/or box level navigation. (This Style Manual displays both subpages and box levels in the navigation.)

Responsive Design

LibGuides uses responsive web design, an approach that enables a web page to adapt to smaller screens like tablets and phones to optimize viewability. This means that the order boxes display on a LibGuides page will differ on a larger device vs. a smaller device.

• So, it's important to avoid using "positional language" (e.g. left, right, top bottom) in the text to describe where content is located in the guide.
• One tip is to link to the content you are referring to within a guide, as every box has a unique URL.

Note that on a full-sized monitor, you can re-size your browser window to see how content would display on a smaller screen. Here's what you'll notice when viewing a guide with side-navigation layout on small devices:

• The navigation will be at the top.
• The box(es) in the left column will display next.
• The box(es) in the right column will wrap around and display below the left column.

In February 2024, NYU replaced the Gotham web font with a new custom font: NYU Perstare.  All Libraries' digital environments (including the library.nyu.edu site and LibGuides) have been set to use this font.  Please do not use any custom fonts nor select a different font from within the LibGuides system.  Please let User Experience (UX) know if you have any questions about this: lib-ux-group@nyu.edu.