Communications

These guidelines are intended primarily for design professionals in the Department of Communications. We hope it will be helpful, however, to any individual who has questions about CREC’s brand identity or is simply seeking a better understanding of how CREC conveys its visual identity.

Important note:
The Department of Communications must approve any print publication that represents CREC publicly. A certain amount of common sense should rule; for example, we don’t expect that student groups producing flyers for school events will typically seek our services. But all publications developed by CREC’s divisions or schools for public use beyond the department or school must be reviewed by our department. More often than not, Communications produces these publications, so review occurs naturally.

Divisions, programs, or schools producing publications internally or with the assistance of a freelancer should contact Joel DeJong at jdejong@crec.org or (860) 524-4097 in the Department of Communications to ensure that our department has an opportunity to review. If you are in doubt about whether our department needs to be consulted or not, please ask us. Don’t risk violating CREC’s brand standards.

Guidelines

CREC Colors
Color Palette
CREC Fonts
Graphics Guidelines and Specifics
Photography and Writing
Letterhead and Business Cards

CREC Colors

CREC’s primary color is green. CREC green should always be printed as PMS 3292 or the CMYK equivalent C100, Y49, K46. Publications for CREC Schools uses purple (PMS 2613; C74, M100, Y25, K20). Publications for CREC’s Sale of Service Divisions uses blue (PMS 3015; C100, M30, K20).

Full color publications: Ordinarily, the CREC green, purple, or blue in addition to black and white, are the predominant colors in CREC’s publications with additional color coming from color photos. The primary CREC color used is determined based on whether the publication is a CREC general publication (green), CREC Schools publication (purple), or a CREC sale-of-service division publication (blue).

One or two spot colors may be added from color pallet below if there is a good reason for doing so. Choices for spot colors should be driven by the photos, and if they are used, kept to a minimum.

Two (or three) color publications: Always use the CREC green, purple, or blue, and black or white. Percentages of black may be incorporated. An additional spot color may be added if there is a good reason for doing so, if it is a neutral chosen from the color palette (below), and if its use is kept to a minimum.

Color Palette

The main colors in a publication should be CREC green, purple, or blue, and black or white. If an accent color is appropriate, it should be chosen from the list below. If none of the colors on the list will work, exceptions can only be made and approved of by the Department of Communications.

Note: Colors on screen are close approximations of printed colors.

CREC Fonts

Good typography is an important part of the CREC brand. We pay careful attention to the overall hierarchy, attributes of fonts, font size/thickness, kerning (how close together the letters are), leading (spacing between lines), spacing (before and after each paragraph), and margins.

We make the overall organization of a publication as simple and easy to understand as possible. We try to limit font categories to Head, Subhead, and Body, with sparing additions.

In general, we choose one san-serif font for all heads and one serif font for body type (in addition to a headline font for the title of the publication if desired).

Fonts for all publication materials must be taken from the following list:

• Headers: Rockwell, Century Gothic, Franklin Gothic
• Body Text: Minion Pro, Palatino, Bookman Old Style

Condensed, extended, bold, and italic versions are used as necessary. Specific choices are driven by the mood of the piece and how well fonts go together.

General guidelines for fonts:

• Hierarchy should be clearly understandable and consistent through the entire piece.
• Hierarchy is defined through font size, contrast, and control of white space.
• Consistent formatting throughout the publication is essential to the quality of the publication. Making the best use of styles is the best way to ensure consistency.
• Sparingly use of bolds and italics. When everything is highlighted, nothing is highlighted. There are very few good reasons for making type both bold and italic.
• Different capitalization techniques can be used in headers or sub-headers, but all caps or small caps is not appropriate for body text.
• Paragraph attributes, kerning, leading, or soft-returns should be used to eliminate windows (large spaces of white space created by line breaks) and orphans (single words on a line).
• Bold sans-serif fonts should be used for captions or other small units of type.

Graphics Guidelines and Specifics

Cover Requirements:
Three (3) elements must appear on every cover: a CREC logo (traditional or stacked), the publication title, and a CREC approved graphic element, such as the CREC swish.  Text is kept to a minimum. If text other than the title is absolutely necessary, we keep it from muddying the look by putting it in a bar, or by using some other technique. The CREC Central address block and website must be on the back of every publication.

Graphic Elements:
Having consistent graphic elements on all CREC publications is central to CREC’s brand identity. We keep designs simple and clean, with simple graphic elements carried through a publication. CREC’s common graphic elements are squares and horizontal or vertical bars.

CREC has approved graphic elements that should appear on each publication in some form. These are the CREC squares, formatted in a swish, or other appropriate organization. These graphic elements should be colored to match the logo used for the publication (CREC green for general CREC publications, CREC purple for CREC schools, and CREC blue for sale-of-service divisions). Please contact Joel DeJong at jdejong@crec.org or (860) 524-4097 with questions about the proper use of CREC’s graphic elements.

Photography: CREC publications use photography to introduce color into a publication. Cover photographs should be chosen for their quality and alignment with the content of the piece. Interior photographs should align with the mood of the entire piece and have a consistent style. Photographs should not be embossed, texturized, or otherwise graphically manipulated with artistic effects.

White Space and Margins:
Just because there is room on a page does not mean it should be filled. We are generous with margins and white space. Pages that have more space on top and on the outside seem inviting and open to the reader.

Photography and Writing

Our brand relies on the use of strong photography to convey important communication messages. We choose images carefully to help set our publications apart. We avoid using photos that look like “snapshots,” and are cautious about shots that look overly posed. If you have any questions about photos, please contact Jerry Clapis at jclapis@crec.org or (860) 524-4039.

Text should follow CREC’s writing standards. If you have any questions, please contact Joel DeJong at jdejong@crec.org or (860) 524-4097.

Letterhead & Business Cards

Letterhead and business cards are important ways in which CREC’s brand identity is portrayed. Employees must use our standard formats at all times. To request business cards or letterhead, please submit a Project Request.

Publications Contacts

Joel DeJong - Graphic Design Specialist
jdejong@crec.org or (860) 524-4097