Happy new year to all, and a hearty welcome to our new blog readers who signed up for updates from the Communications team about our special projects. I (this is Samara Sit from the Communications office as chief blogger) will drop periodic updates to things that might be of interest. You can follow along via push email or by visiting the blog itself, which lives here: https://commprojects.blogs.brynmawr.edu/.

Faculty, staff, and trustees received the announcement in December that we released the new guidelines website (hooray again!) with tips on using all of our new messaging, logos, and other verbal and visual items. I know some of you are off to the races on using these materials, while others have questions.

Creative director Emma Bumstead and I are scheduling small-group training sessions for staff this month and next to try and address unit-specific usage questions before offering larger sessions. I also hope to be on the January faculty meeting agenda. Thanks to those who have reached out with interest in scheduling a training. If you’d like to schedule something for your group, please reach out to me at ssit@brynmawr.edu and we can work together on a good date and time.

But when do you use these guidelines? Think of it as guidelines most suited for when you are communicating to others. That could be a newsletter, a PowerPoint presentation, a social media post, an email signature, a brochure, and so on. If you want to talk about the College, we have language for that. If you want to design something to convey information, we have fonts and colors and patterns and icons and much more for that. My preference is that you use the guidelines for communicating to internal audiences as well as external audiences. So that means, if you’re talking to our staff/faculty/students/alumnae/i community, or if you’re talking to prospective students and others beyond campus, ideally you’re guided by the new guidelines.

What are some ways you can adopt the work now?

• Update your email signature by using our fun new email sig generator designed by Amanda Coltri
• Many of you have done this already, but if you haven’t order a new permanent nametag so the community can get to know you
• Use your new logo. If you report to President Wendy, or you report to someone who does, you have a new logo to use on emails, letterhead, etc., downloadable here
• If you need a way to describe Bryn Mawr College, we have new language for that. Use this for grant proposals, brochures, etc.
• And watch this space for future updates, or troll this institutional positioning resources webpage for a hint on things to come.

Also, thanks to those who offered feedback on the PowerPoint template. I have good news: we have a final template prepared and I’d love your further feedback on the function and design. If you’d like to download the template and offer feedback by 4pm on January 17th, please email me for the link. (Again, at ssit@brynmawr.edu.) Otherwise, when the final template is finished, I’ll blog about it. It will also appear on the resources page linked above. (And for those who are curious, the final decision about the footer design question you voted on in December was that I split the difference — we used the lantern icon on some of the slides, and the URL on others. Mostly, the lantern.)

Up next is newly designed business cards, and once again I’ll be looking for your vote when we have a few final designs, as well as a suite of items for our “punchout” catalog, including memo pads, digital and printed letterhead, mailing labels, etc. And many other things after that…

I’ll leave you with a final cryptic plug for Tuesday of next week… our website system is getting a bit of a glow-up related to the new guidelines. Do make a point of logging on after 9:00 a.m. and letting me know what you think!