Archive for November, 2008

Electronic Letterhead, Part 1a

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008

Thanks to the first four entrants in the e-letterhead review. Jokingly I said I’d give you a grade on your entry, this probably put some of you off. Actually the first four cover the grade gamut. Everyone forgot about the affirmative action statement at the bottom of the page. If your letter goes off campus, it really should have this, if your letter/memo stays internal, you can omit it. Illustrating the goal to be attained is the sample below of the letterhead file produced by Printing Services.

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Electronic Letterhead, Part 1?

Friday, November 14th, 2008

Wow, seems to be quite a groundswell of you making your own ‘electronic letterhead’. I applaud your initiative in going green and saving on printing costs. However we all need to be on the same page with this. As easy as it is to assemble the pieces, its also easy to do it wrong. Yes, there is a right way and a wrong way to do this. Maybe I didn’t get the word out enough. The way I thought would be best for everyone was to have Printing Services provide you with the correct layout and files so all you need to do is put it into your template. I guess this may seem too limiting. Not having seen many examples of your work, I can’t determine how off course we are. Please email me an attachment of what you’ve done for your electronic letterhead and I’ll get back to you with a grade on how well you did. Meanwhile please contact Printing Services at least for advice if not the real thing. The main purpose of using the brand is using it uniformly throughout the campus.

If you really, really want to do-it-yourself, use the layout of Letterhead Style B (page 22 in the Style Guide). You should use the logo with entity for your area, and use a sans serif font (Ariel, Helvetica) for your personal/office information. I’d stay away from using the brandmark, but if you must, please test it for clarity before using.

Building the Brand Bar, Part 1

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

One of the main elements of of the Brand look is the Brand Bar which is the stripe at the top or bottom of visual graphic layouts such as publication covers, brochures, advertisements, posters, and other pieces. It can also be used in electronic presentations, web pages, and videos.

The Brand Bar generally consists of four elements: a dark stripe of color (black or a dark blue matching PMS 282), an optional subtle photographic image superimposed on top of the stripe, the URI logo or the logo with entity, and (optionally) the Brandmark with Tag Line.

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