Website Design Guide

The guide outlines the design styles and patterns we use on www.baltimorecountymd.gov. When making additions to the site or developing applications that link to it, follow these standards to ensure a consistent and authoritative web presence. Official Baltimore County Government web pages must be visually related in order to reinforce our brand identity.

Many of the code snippets in this guide are specific to SiteExecutive's native classes and IDs; however the visual design and usage guidelines apply to public-facing digital properties.

View the full Design Guide in Storybook.

Who Should Use This Guide

This is a resource for front-end developers, designers and vendors who work on web products for Baltimore County. If you're a content contributor or editor, you might want to check out our Writing Standards instead.

Design Principles 

When designing any digital property for Baltimore County, keep our six design principles in mind:

• Do the hard work now. It's very hard to make things easy. Invest your time now, so our users don't have to invest their time later.
• Start with user needs. We're responsible to our users above all. If you don’t know what they need, you won’t build the right thing.
• Design with data. Our projects always begin with analysis and end with user testing. Assumptions are a starting place, but evidence must bear them out.
• Build for inclusion. Government is for everyone. Our services must be accessible, usable and useful.
• Mobile first. We build responsive websites planned for small screens—from the start.
• Be consistent. Consistency ensures a reliable experience and builds trust.