Branding is so important because it is the way in which a company, organization or individual is perceived. Promoting consistency for the University brand unifies the UA family and makes it easy to recognize that something is from UA.
Keep the following in mind when designing:
Department heads are responsible for sharing this content with their departments, designer or their student designers. Communication should primarily be through a staff member and student work MUST be reviewed by a designated staff member.
Marketing projects should look professional, even when they have a fun look geared to students. Student designers should probably be junior or senior in communications (advertising or public relations) or art with a graphic design focus to work on projects of this level.
Images that are from the internet or social media are usually low resolution and will be blurry and small. Please try to obtain vector versions of graphics and high-resolution images for your design projects. You may want to take a nice camera to important events to have high-resolution images to use in your promotional projects.
These are needed only if an image is intended to print all the way to the edge of the paper, rather than have a white border. Bleeds need to be 1/8 to 1/4 inch in size past the artwork so that the printer can print on a larger sheet of paper and trim the product down to the right size. They make a printed piece look nice, but usually cost a little more to print. Think of the bleed as a frame that will be trimmed off. They are helpful and sometimes required for the printer.
The major difference is that raster image pixels do not retain their appearance as the size increases because they have a fixed resolution – when you blow a photograph up, it becomes blurry for this reason.
Vector images retain appearance regardless of size, since the mathematical formulas dictate how the image is rendered. Vector format is the best quality of an image or logo. If any logos for events or materials are made vector should be used. Vector is the best form because it is scalable, vector-based images are resolution-independent. You can increase and decrease the size of vector images to any degree and your lines will remain crisp and sharp, both on-screen and in print. Most promotional product companies require vector files.
Please submit all hero images to the communications team for review. Use good judgment on all other images for your website.
For creating publications. It is typically where you combine all of your Photoshop and Illustrator images with large blocks of text.
Best uses: Flyers, brochures, invitations, calendars, infographics, schedules, forms, PowerPoint slide backgrounds (typically .pdf)
For creating vector images (based on math formulas) that can be scaled to any size without losing resolution.
Best uses: Logos (creation, changing colors, etc.), Flyers, brochures, t-shirt designs, social media and web graphics, Invitations, buttons, infographics, schedules, forms, PowerPoint slide backgrounds, editing pdfs (typically .eps)
For editing photos and creating raster images (based on pixels).
Best uses: Photo editing (cropping, resizing, recoloring, etc.), social media and web graphics, PowerPoint slide backgrounds (typically .jpg)
Both are great tools for quick social media designs and graphics.