Greetings, friends and colleagues – welcome to my final single blog post about the Bryn Mawr institutional positioning project!

Since my previous update in April, a lot has been happening. Drum roll please…

First and foremost, we have finally launched our new on-demand custom printed items catalog! This will replace the former “Punchout” catalog that closed earlier this year. Our new vendor is W.B. Mason, and there are 16 stationery items available for you to purchase, including a variety of business cards, printer mailing labels, letterhead, memo pads, envelopes, and more that you can customize. Only employees with E-Market access can see and order these items. Special thanks to those of you who helped test various parts of this system with early orders. See our project resources page for more details. You can also find free new LinkedIn headers there to customize your LinkedIn profile with some Byrn Mawr imagery.

Second, we are merely weeks away from launching a new, on-demand digital asset management system called Photoshelter that will help you explore a self-service, curated online collection of high-quality photographs showcasing our academics, traditions, daily life, and architectural beauty. These images will be available for royalty-free use by the entire campus community and can be accessed with your college email address via single sign-on. We will be testing the system with a few campus partners in the next few weeks, and make the system available to all faculty and staff next month.

Lastly, I have completed production on our new recruitment video for undergraduate admissions. Featuring three members of the class of 2025, the video shows a day in the life of a Bryn Mawr student and the opportunities available to all our students to pursue their own path. The new positioning platform exists in the voices you hear (of our actual students!) Look for it soon on the college’s homepage, and it will also be shared with prospective students interested in the Bryn Mawr experience.

It has been a true pleasure blogging with you since fall 2023. While our work with the positioning continues on a great many fronts, I will be turning over the primary purpose of this blog to keep the campus community updated on an exciting new project that will transform our website and some of the ways we share information digitally. Stay tuned shortly for that news. If you don’t wish to receive updates about the new project, please see the bottom of this email to unsubscribe.

My best to all for a great academic year,

Samara

Happy spring, although the weather might convince you otherwise. Here are a few quick updates about positioning project work:

First, despite best efforts, the work with W. B. Mason to launch our online “punchout” catalog with on-demand printed materials is taking much longer than anticipated. I am hopeful to announce later in April that the portal is open for you to order everything from business cards to printed letterhead and beyond. I know some of you have been waiting very patiently, and I’m afraid you’ll have to wait just a bit longer.

However, we have uploaded some other resources that you can use right now! Visit our Resources page of the Positioning website to download new customizable digital letterhead and also two paper nametag templates! https://www.brynmawr.edu/inside/offices-services/college-communications/institutional-positioning-guide/resources Also available are new LinkedIn header images for your personal LinkedIn profile page, our PowerPoint template, and more.

Also, eagle-eyed website visitors may have noticed a new wave of changes to our website visual offerings. You’ll recall phase one launched in January, with a wide array of color, logo, font, and other changes. Phase two launched just a couple of weeks ago, and brought the following new abilities:

1. Change background colors for some page sections
2. Add architectural patterns as background for some page sections
3. Change the shape of photos from the standard rectangle shape to architectural window shape

If you’re interested in learning more about applying these items to your own website section on Brynmawr.edu, please make time for this special “Drupal Drop-In” event on April 17. These elements need to be manually applied to webpages, so unlike January’s updates, they are not automatic. Event details: https://www.brynmawr.edu/inside/latest/events/drupal-drop-backgrounds-patterns-frames

To see these new elements in action, you can see them on these and other pages:

https://www.brynmawr.edu/admissions-aid

https://www.brynmawr.edu/about-college/sustainability-bryn-mawr

https://www.brynmawr.edu/admissions-aid/get-connected/mawr-you-know

As always, special thanks to the LITS Web Services team and our Communications website team for making these options available. And thanks to everyone who voted on business cards and gave feedback on letterhead and other items!

A quick reminder to those who have not yet taken the survey on new business card designs that the deadline is Monday, February 17th, at 5:00 p.m.

https://brynmawr.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_411yUr0rnLta0HI

Also, I was wondering whether anyone uses note cards anymore? We weren’t planning to issue a new design for formal note cards right away, but I am curious if it’s something people would even use. In the past, Bryn Mawr had a folded notecard with the old monogram and matching envelope. We could also offer a single card option instead with envelope. Would you drop me a line and let me know if this is something you would order? ssit@brynmawr.edu

Thanks, everyone.

Good morning. Thank you to everyone who voted in our recent survey about letterhead redesigns. The most popular options turned out to be #1 and #6, and we are researching whether we can offer two options instead of one in the forthcoming online catalog.

I have a second survey for you — redesigned business card options! Voting will close at 5pm on Monday, February 17th. A note that we hope to offer multiple options for purchase, but I’m curious about what you find most attractive and why.

Vote here

We are aiming to launch the online “punchout” catalog in March. W.B. Mason will be hosting and fulfilling the on demand service, and many of the products will have customizable text fields so you can add your office/department name or change the order of details around as needed. Emma Bumstead is working with W.B. Mason to test paper and print quality right now so we can offer you only high quality products once we go live. Thank you to our friends in Procurement for their support in this process.

The catalog will include items you can order and charge to your unit budget, including the following: business cards, paper letterhead, nametags, mailing labels, note pads, and more.

I’ve seen some fantastic usage of the new visual design work by units across campus. Thanks for all the questions and engagement about how to use various elements.

Some quick updates today at the end of this first week of the semester. Hopefully, everyone still has feeling in their fingers and toes after a most memorable weather week temperature-wise at Bryn Mawr!

Our brand new, expanded, beautiful PowerPoint template is finished and available to you for download now on our Resources webpage. There are customizable and pre-designed options for your use when giving any sort of presentation or lecture. Happy presenting!

We have six sample redesigns for the college’s official digital/paper letterhead and now you can vote for your favorite! Vote early and just once, please. The survey will close on Monday, February 3 at 5 p.m. Vote for your favorite here. The letterhead, along with related paper envelopes, memo pads, and paper nametags will be designed similarly and offered later this semester for purchase online.

Speaking of paper things, we have a first round of new business card design options too, but there’s a ton of them so we’re going to narrow the field a bit before we offer that up for feedback as well.

Positioning Project Live: You might see me at the upcoming faculty meeting on 1/29 and the Coffee Hour on 2/5… or at a team meeting near you. As always, if you have any questions or would like a house call, please drop us a note at communications@brynmawr.edu.

You might log onto our brynmawr.edu website on January 14th or later and wonder: this looks different. But what changed?

First of all, we are now using the new color palette as the basis for all page colors, so in general there will just be more colors to look at that are complementary with each other, adding a new vibrancy.

We are also using our new primary fonts, so how the words appears will feel a bit more modern.

Replacing all the college wordmarks with the new logo may look different because the new logo also has the college seal attached.

And, you’ll see some revisions to what we call the “header” and the “footer” of the website, which are essentially are the sections at the top and the bottom that appear on multiple pages. We decided to add more useful links to the footer that we hope will be helpful.

Special thanks to our friends in LITS’ Web Services office for the programming lift in making all this happen, and to my team in Communications for making a lot of decisions to help us get to this point, in addition to testing earlier versions.

And…. we’re not done! Stay tuned for two more phases of element updates to the website before Commencement to bring more of the new visual work to the system, including items like the popular architectural shapes and patterns. (You can see the new messaging system at work right on the homepage already, which flipped over before Thanksgiving last year.)

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!

Tomorrow afternoon something exciting is arriving! It reminds me of another fortuitous fortune cookie message from yes, my favorite Dim Sum restaurant, received right before Thanksgiving:

Tomorrow we are officially releasing the Institutional Positioning Guidelines website in an email to Bryn Mawr faculty and staff! (Well that’s great, Samara, but what is that?)

Loyal blog readers will recall earlier posts this year where we described all the great new updates for our visual identity, and the development of new messaging and other verbal guidelines. Well now it’s all been finalized, the project is completed, and Communications is launching a website with all the guidelines for your use.

Hooray!

In addition to guidelines for design and messaging to guide your communications work, we will also be launching a self-service logo downloads area. If you are looking for a college logo, an academic school/program logo, or the logo of the units that report to the president (and their direct reports), you will be able to find them on the guidelines website. (Some logos are still in progress, so email us at communications@brynmawr.edu if we’re missing something you’re looking for.)

It feels great to finally release this work to the campus to guide any internal or external communications and marketing work you might be doing. Everything Communications does from this point forward will be using these guidelines. It took a Bryn Mawr village, and the many hardworking people from our external partner SimpsonScarborough, to get us to this point. Thank you for your continued support and interest. Our work doesn’t end here, though: now we have to live the work in all the ways we communicate. We will be scheduling smaller group sessions to help units learn how to use this work, but drop us an email if you have any immediate questions.

We’re also steaming along on the new PowerPoint themed template deck. Our designer had a question about the footer, and I’d love your feedback.

Some of the text-based slides will have a permanent footer (on the bottom!) Which do you like the best of the below options? I’m leaning toward one of the bottom four, but what is your preference? Send me an email and tell me why by this weekend ssit@brynmawr.edu.

After many months of planning, I am thrilled to say that we had a successful soft launch of our new visual and verbal identity work from the positioning project at Owls Fest and Inauguration on October 25 and 26. Our new official yellow color “Lantern’s Glow” shined brightly to underscore Wendy Cadge’s main Inaugural Address message of love and light, from the new stage design to the swag to the signage. It was a joy to see! A special shout-out to our Creative Director Emma Bumstead, whose design direction on many things Inauguration and Owls fest helped us put a unified foot forward.

Here’s the primary photo gallery

Here’s the Inauguration content page, include event video, prepared remarks, etc.

You can really see many parts of the new visual identity come together here in the event program. From the colors, to the fonts, to the architectural patterns, to the new icons – all the elements play well with each other and do evoke a bolder yet refined visual impression of our favorite liberal arts college.

Also, more good news from that weekend: the Board of Trustees voted to approve the proposed revisions to the historical college seal! More guidance will follow about what that means and how you will use it. I’m glad we have this important symbol to use in conjunction with our revised Wordmark to demonstrate our continued committment to strong academics.

Ok so now that we’ve celebrated our new president, as well as welcomed so many athletes, parents, friends, guardians, alumnae/i, and others to campus for the big October celebration, what’s hapenning next with the positioning project?

Our primary focus this month is to finish a brand new postioning guidelines website section that will give you all the details you need to help you write in the voice of Bryn Mawr to designing something in the style of Bryn Mawr. I’ll also be sending out a campus announcement providing that resource, and my goal is before Thanksgiving. Fingers crossed!

Thanks to those of you who provided feedback about a new college PowerPoint template. You raised some helpful points and I incorporated your feedback into the project scope. The new deck is slated to have 30+ new slide options, not including some baked-in content slides about Bryn Mawr. The design phase will launch next week and we’ll release it for testing with this group as soon as we can.

I haven’t forgotten about the Canva project for self-service graphic design or the new digital asset management project for college photography. They remain on the list and I expect both will be launched in the next couple of months.

As always, let me know if you have any questions about what’s happening, and thanks for your continued support!

Last Saturday, my husband and I went out for Dim Sum brunch at a local Chinese restaurant, where I received a rather on-point fortune cookie message.

How did the cookie know that it’s Inauguration and Owls Fest later this week, a time for us to celebrate and appreciate each other as a community? Or even that it’s October? Or that sometimes the best way through stressful times is to practice gratitude? I’m not sure, but since you didn’t subscribe for a daily affirmation blog, I’ll tie this back to the positioning work.

As I mentioned last post, I hope those of you who are not directly lending your assistance with the events this week can attend Inauguration and Owls Fest and see some of our new designs in action. There’s lots of fun swag available for attendees, too!

Meanwhile, we’re working ahead to pick up some of our many design projects for after this week is over. One of them is a complete redesign of the College PowerPoint template deck, which will be very helpful for those of you who present on behalf of the College regularly. (Here’s the current set of template decks if you haven’t seen them before.)

I’m interested to know what you might be looking for in a new PowerPoint template. Are there any specific functionalities or content slides you would find helpful? Let us know by filling out this quick four-question anonymous survey. The deck will be available online for anyone to download and use.

BMC PowerPoint template deck survey

Thanks for your help. I’ll close the survey end of day on 10/24. Have a great week!