FORMS DESIGN STANDARDS - 1720
Forms can be filled out and designed on paper or by electronic media. Agencies should follow the forms design standards, criteria, and techniques presented in the Forms Handbook. All agency departmental forms and all state standard (STD) forms must contain the term “State of California”, the authoring department’s name, a form title, a form number, and a form creation or revision date. Contact the Forms Management Center (FMC) for information about forms design standards and software.
All State forms must comply with all other applicable form requirements (see SAM Section 1745).
Forms not included in the STD Forms Program may not carry “STD” or any variation of that designation as a prefix to the form number. If a form is removed from coordination as an STD form and returned to management of the generating agency, the agency must change the number and identification. These forms may carry a statement such as “Formerly STD XXX”’.
All agency forms must show certain identifying information. If there is space, you should place this information together on the form. The Forms Handbook shows formatting for this information.
Form Titles – Form titles must describe both the form’s subject and function. See the Forms Handbook for help with titling forms.
Form Numbers – Ideally, form numbers should be prefixed by the initials of the agency, i.e., FTB, SCO, etc. The numbers may follow any plan or scheme that works for your agency but must not duplicate a number already in use by the agency. A form used by an office or division within an agency may carry a sub-prefix. An example is “DGS OLS” for the DGS, Office of Legal Services.
Creation or Revision Dates – The date, must be the month and year in which the form was created or first distributed, such as “MM/YYYY”. If it is revised, the date will be the month and year in which the form was revised, such as “‘Rev. 01/2020”’.
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) Format - Converting or developing forms in an HTML format can provide many benefits, including but not limited to: ADA compliance, increased business process efficiencies, secured data collection as well as enabling automated workflows to be adopted more easily.
Agencies must use the current standard, HTML5 or higher.
Agencies must consider usability of the forms and build them to have a responsive and extensible design. (Ex. Mobile devices, tablets, laptops etc.).
It is not advisable to preprint names of employees on forms unless there are compelling reasons to do so. An exception may be made for names of elected or appointed officials.