Branding and Style Guide
This guide contains information, the tools, inspiration and examples to help you understand and work with the Ups and Downs Southwest brand.
We know you enjoy creating leaflets, flyers, social media posts that support us, this guide will hopefully make that better for you and us.
What our brand is about
Ups and Downs Southwest is about ensuring every child and young person with Down Syndrome enjoys a happy and secure environment which meets their emotional, social, health and educational needs. That they are accepted by, included in, and are enabled, to make a positive contribution to the society in which they live.
What drives us.
Ups and Downs Southwest is a team of people, driven by a passion that is – support for those with, and everybody involved, with Down Syndrome, be they children, parents, grandparents, siblings, teachers, nurses, doctors …………
The principles
Ups and Downs Southwest has a personality, that is accessible, bright, cheerful, friendly, and helpful.
The branding is about being instantly recognised for all of the above and permeates through the entire culture of the charity.
The visual side of the charity’s branding defines who we are and is so much more than just the logo.
The simplicity of colours reflects the ideals of Ups and Downs. The pink and blue to represent the Ups and Downs hence pink at the top of a page or section and blue at the bottom of a page or section. It is also internationally a reference to boys and girls and how Downs Syndrome does not choose either sex.
The message through the design and layout is also clean and simple lots of white space to show our message is clear and uncluttered.
The children are at the heart of who we are and are an integral part of the branding graphics, e.g. the buttons on the website or in header panels for some of the leaflets.
Legal Considerations
An aspect of creating the flyers, leaflets, posters, graphics etc. is to ensure you comply with the law regarding copyright and intellectual property rights.
It is essential you make sure you are not using material that belongs to others without their permission, by ignoring this means you are breaking the law which can get you and the charity in a lot of trouble.
It is a misconception that an image on the web is free to use, it rarely is, whether you found it on a website or Google, it belongs to somebody else and is their copyrighted image.
You must check you can use it, some people do allow their images to be downloaded and used directly from the web, and some if you contact them, might grant permission for its use. Sometimes you can use an image with attribution.
There are a few sources of free images on the web where they grant a license known as a Creative Commons Zero (CCO) license, but before each use check, this applies to the image.
You can find some images on the following sites that you can download and use. Even then please check each image’s license every time you want to use an image as the rights can change.
The Style Guide
The main elements of the branding style are the Logo, the solid pink and blue lines top and bottom of the page. Any other segments may use separators of pink at the top and blue at the bottom.
Font
The font used throughout is Verdana – this is a clean font that is easily available.
Verdana Regular
A B C D F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890
Verdana Bold
A B C D F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890
Verdan Italic
A B C D F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890
Colours
The colours reflect the fun, clean, modern, energetic nature of the charity, and uses four basic colours. It is important not to confuse the message with lots of conflicting colours. Unless there is a very good reason no other colours should be used.
The four colours used are Pink, Blue, White and Black.
| Colour | Hex | RGB | CMYK | Pantone |
Pink |
#da0079 | 218,0,121 | 10,100,18,0 | 219 C |
Blue |
#2ea3f2 | 46,163,242 | 67,25,0,0 | 2925 C |
White |
#ffffff | 255,255,255 | 0,0,0,0 | |
Black |
#000000 | 0,0,0 | 75,68,67,90 |
Logo Elements
There are three parts to the logo.
The Main Logo – This can be used on its own or combined with the Strapline.
The Logo Graphic – Used sparingly and rarely, this can be used on its own where a strong, simple graphic is required such as on a balloon, or mug. It should only be used when the audience will already be aware of Ups and Downs Southwest.
Additional Graphics
The children are featured in many of the graphics, in the form of an image of a child above a text block. These text blocks comprise a short phase with a minimum of two words and are deliberately kept short to convey the message. The first word or section is in the pink the second part is in the blue.
Resources and examples
Whether for the website, social media, print or other publicity it is essential the guidelines are followed. However, they have been designed to enable plenty of flexibility in their use.
Unfortunately, it is not always possible to use the same graphics for social media as you would for print as they have different size constraints.
While you might create an A4 flyer/poster which works well in print, it does not reproduce well on social media which requires a different size.
Social Media
The first thing to remember about Social Media is that while it is about communication the whole purpose from the charity’s point of view is to encourage engagement with our website.
The website should become the first port of call for information, about Ups and Downs Southwest. It contains all the details about the charity its services, its resources, its news, its events its stories.
If you wish to create an
