After more than a year of development, the new website for Brigham Young University-Idaho's branding guide is complete, and features a more accessible, streamlined guide, as well as changes to the branding logo.
The branding guide on the BYU-Idaho website serves as a resource for all employees who wish to advertise or market on or off campus. It gives all necessary information from what type of brand a person needs to use, to price assessments, to steps of the approval process. All of this information is now featured in a clear and concise way.
"Understanding the university brand is important because when people communicate they have a certain style and a certain way of doing things that represent them," said Brand and Marketing Coordinator James Linton. "The university also has a certain style and way of doing things that represents the institution. But how well do people know how to do it?"
One of the biggest changes is the new logo box, which has been created to replace the black bar the university previously used to signify that an advertisement was BYU-Idaho sanctioned. Both of these brands have been used to help viewers recognize quickly the message is from the university.
"It sets the tone of a professional, clean, scholarly, dignified message, and it resonates with the audience and the students," Linton said.
While working well for posters, the black bar had become cumbersome for designing billboards or other horizontal advertisements. The new logo box should allow designers more freedom in how and where they put it, and allow them to integrate it into an advertisement more easily.
In addition to the new logo box, changes were made to the website that now make it simpler and clear for everyone who uses it.
"We have more content that is available as far as style guides and communication guides," Linton said. "The logos are now easier to download, we've listed all the resources we have which will help them with publishing and tell them where to go and what to do. We're just trying to be more helpful in different ways."
Web analytics have shown that since the website's inception in January, users are able to follow the branding process much easier than before. On the previous website, users would typically only get to two or three pages in before calling for assistance. Now, most are able to get through the entire process, and only contact University Relations when it comes time for approval.
"That kind of shows that it is a lot more streamlined than before, and they understand that they can do this and get started on it," Linton said. "Hopefully it's more of an intuitive and easy process than what was there before."
For more information on the new branding guide go to www.byui.edu/branding.