Media Outreach

Everywhere we turn, there is another application to help us sync one device to another. I’m not going to lie. Every time I hear that word, I’m captured. We’re always looking for faster ways to do things.  But, as always, faster isn’t always better.

Knowing the pace our culture has set, it’s important to have certain things outlined to never change, no matter who is using what medium.  This will avoid the issues of quality versus quantity.

When thinking about your website and your overall brand image, you want to make it foolproof for all staff and volunteers to maintain a unified front.  Today, we’re going to give you a list of things to “stylize” or to have a set format when passing the website responsibility to others.

• Logo Usage – Your logo is the one thing that should never change from piece to piece. Marketing campaigns will come and go, but your logo should only be tweaked over time.  Make sure that you make the correct logo format available for those uploading information to the website.  It should be 300dpi for best quality. If this is currently not in your reach, contact the designer of your logo.  Lower resolutions don’t resize as well and can alter the integrity of the logo.
• Image Usage – Utilize actual photo editing software when seeking to resize images for the web. Attempting to use the CMS (Content Management Software) to accomplish this is usually not the answer. You’ll find an image incorrectly cropped or worse, as my coworker says, it could turn into a “squatty” image.  There is plenty of free photo editing software out there.  One we recommend is http://www.gimp.org/.  It has many of the same tools as Photoshop, but is more user-friendly and has plenty of usage tutorials.
• Font/Color Usage – This one is killer. Since content is king, how you format the content is definitely queen.  If you go from one page of your website to the other and you have red San Serif on one and blue Calibri on another, we have a problem. Create a style sheet that tells your folks what font, color and size each of the following areas should be.  Try and stick to one color. For those of you that find that ridiculous, stick to two.  Here’s a sample

Header – Point 14, Font Helvetica Neue, Format Bold
Sub Header – Point 12, Font Helvetica Neue, Format Italic
Body – Point 12, Font Helvetica Neue, Format Regular
Call to Action, Point 12, Font Helvetica Neue, Format Bold
Footer, Point 12, Font Helvetica, Format Regular

Typing this up will do a couple things. One, it will allow you to finalize it in your mind. You may have had the majority of this outlined, but until it’s on paper, it’s a little more difficult to keep track of. Two, you can print it out and hand it to every person that touches your website or marketing collateral.

And voila. One step closer to total brand sync.

Photo By: nathanborror