College Relations: Design Tips

- Generally, use no more than two fonts on a page.

- Use italic instead of bold to emphasize more than a few words in a line.

- Try not to use all capitals for more than a few words at a time. They are too difficult to read.

- Use special character styles such as outline or shadow rarely, if ever.

- Use reverse type (white type on black background) with extreme restraint.

- When typing numbers in text, always spell out one through nine. Use figures for 10 or more unless they appear at the beginning of a sentence.
Graphics, Photos & Clip Art.

- Use clip art sparingly.

- Use boxes, borders and rules with restraint.

- A ‘screen’ (gray fill) behind a block of type can separate and highlight special sections, but keep the percent of black in the ‘screen’ to no more than 20 percent, or the type becomes difficult to read.

- Graphics, photos and spot color can brighten a publication and focus attention when relevant.

 

- Avoid cramming too much information into a small composition.

- Make sure your headlines and subheads are closer to the text they refer to than the text above.

- Don’t use every available feature.

- Keep sentences and paragraphs short but varied in length.

- Break up long text with subheads.

 

The goal:  What do you hope to accomplish? What is your message and what response do you hope to elicit? Is there a problem you hope to solve?

The audience:  Who are your anticipated readers?

The design:   To the public, your piece belongs to the family of publications representing the college. Should it share the ‘look’ of a related piece produced by your department? Could this material, or any part of it have other uses, or can it be augmented by existing material?

The budget:  How much do you have to spend? How many copies do you need? Have you included postage?

The distribution:  How will the material be distributed? By bulk mail? Remember to include the proper bulk mail stamp in your design. Does it need to fit into a standard, readily available envelope?

The deadline:  When must the piece be in the readers’ hands to get the reaction you want? Working backward from this date, allot time (at least two weeks for minor publications and more for major publications) for the following:

- Preparation for mailing
- Printing (either on or off campus)
- Design
- Copy preparation, including all approvals

 

- Rushing a publication usually causes cost to increase and quality to decrease.

- Producing more copies of a publication lowers the per unit cost.

- Keep at least one copy of the finished piece in your files for future reference.

- Throwing away unused copies is equal to throwing away money.

- Please do not type in all caps or use abbreviations. Remember to be consistent throughout with capitalization, abbreviations, punctuation, symbols or words.

- Do all your editing and revisions, if at all possible or practical, before presenting it for production. This will save time and cut your costs for excess revisions and waste materials.