Matias Duarte just dropped by our trailer at CES 2012 to tell us about Google's new effort for ensuring consistency in the Android user experience: a style guide. Android OEMs and app developers will be provided with a set of in-depth guidelines on how to build atop of Android. All the instructions will be made available on a new website — Android Design, a subset of the Android Developers site — which will be built out over time with ever more granular and detailed best practice advice.

The initial version of the guide includes information like typography, color palettes, and other stylistic advice, as well as a breakdown of the components making up the Android UI. Matias stresses that what we're seeing today is a purely optional aid for Android designers, not something that Google will seek to enforce.