Blog Visual Identity Guide
For Hampshire College Offices and Programs
Whether you are building a Wordpress blog for your office or program, or using a blog platform such as Tumblr for social sharing, it is essential that the blog be easy to navigate and read, be clearly identifiable as affiliated with Hampshire, and continue to enforce Hampshire's overall visual identity.
Below are a few simple steps to assist in this process. The communications office will work with you to ensure your blog both meets your needs and the needs of the College. Blogs that fail to meet the basic guidelines will not be linked from the College website and will not receive Hampshire affiliated URL names.
Guidelines
There are several Wordpress themes already available through the IT office that meet the guidelines below. If you choose to pick a different theme, please adhere to the following rules:
- The Hampshire logo should be prominent at the top of your blog, and when technically possible, should link back to http://www.hampshire.edu/. Do not use the Hampshire seal or a variation of the seal, as this is reserved for presidential use only. Do not use or create your own logo.
- Pick a design theme that is clean, clearly organized, and not overly cluttered. A theme may be deemed unusable if the Director of Design finds it to be too visually cluttered or if the design and colors make it difficult to read based on Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
- The theme should be built using responsive design or adaptable for mobile and tablets.
- You should clearly identify your affiliation with Hampshire College in the text of the blog as well as in any "about" section that you might create.
- Link back to Hampshire College (both the homepage and any relevant internal pages). This will help your search engine ranking and will help users as well.
- Use a color or colors featured in Hampshire's visual style guide.
- In the text area of the blog, use a sans-serif font (this will most likely already be the default),
which is easier to read on computers. - Follow Hampshire's editorial style guide. Be especially careful of spelling and grammar errors.
Questions
If you have any questions, please contact web@hampshire.edu. IT and the communications office are happy to assist in the implementations of the guidelines.