Hello everyone. Today is another exciting day for the positioning project, as we are about to cross the finish line on our creative direction. What does this mean?

• While we now know the general direction of many visual elements, we will not be receiving specific written guidance on how best to use them until late August. This is commonly referred to as a “brand book.” Ours will not be a printed book though; instead, we will be creating a whole website section dedicated to detailed guidelines and best practices on how you can incorporate the creative direction and strategic messaging in your work. Our hope will be to roll that out early in the fall semester.
• We are working on our rollout strategy, and not surprisingly, there are a great many elements that will need to be redesigned in the next few months to help us launch the new creative direction. I ask that if you know you will have any graphic design needs in July, August or September for which you planned to request help from the Office of Communications, please notify us via this form by the end of June. Your advanced planning is greatly appreciated!
• This week, Creative Director Emma Bumstead and I met with Trish and Donna in the Controller’s Office to discuss how we will approach redesigning the “punch-out” branded merchandise one can order via E-Market. Items available there include official College business cards, notepads, letterhead, envelopes, labels, and more. We will work to redesign these elements as soon as we can, and will notify staff when the new online marketplace is up and running with revised branded items you can customize.
• I also met with Canva, an online graphic-design tool, to see if we could offer that as a resource to departments and offices for a reduced cost who may have more simple graphic design needs and may benefit from easy access to some of the creative direction elements. I’ll be reaching out to individual offices who currently have a paid seat license to see how you use it, but if you have a free account, email us at communications@brynmawr.edu and let me know how you use the software.
• We will be receiving graphic files for the revised College wordmark in June! If you need anything printed with the wordmark this summer, please use the form linked above.

This week’s fun fact: Another helpful meeting Emma and I had last week was with Jim and Stephanie at the College Book Shop. They mentioned that alumnae/i will occasionally mention that they are surprised by the spelling of the word “Mawrter” that appears on some of their merchandise. Apparently, it is also spelled “Mawrtyr” as well. I asked Allison, our College archivist, to see if there was an obvious original spelling based on the archives. It turns out that both appear to be correct based on some records from the early 1900s. So, pick your favorite spelling and run with it.

What’s next? We will dive much deeper into the strategic positioning work. We continue to work on some short and long versions of the College’s overview language and other positioning elements. We are also beginning to plan some phase one training modules.

Happy Reunion to those who celebrate, and happy weekend to everyone.