Approved designs: Managing projects and change
August 22nd, 2006
Images shouldn’t be:
- Cliched
- Busy
- Old fashioned
- Dull
- Boring
- Forced
- Posed or setup
- Confusing
- Composite collages
- Surreal
- Complicated
Source: OU brand guidelines 4.1
Another guideline that Business School are exempt from? One day business will not mean people in suits with laptops and chods of cash.
See more OU approved ‘on brand designs’ on the brand website.
Tags: OU designs
I had a look through some of the other approved designs was interesting. ‘Fundamentals of Finance’ (or some similarly titled book) had a close up of a large wodge of bank notes (or ‘chods’, to use your own lingo, where are you from Guy?). You can hardly have a go at someone for making such a direct link however.
The thing that probably upsets me most about the picture you inserted is the apparent light blue text on darker blue background. Not the greatest contrast I’ve ever seen.
Still I’m glad to not to sit in course team meetings anymore. I recall with horror far too many discussions about designs that were frankly ridiculous.
August 23rd, 2006 at 2:25 pm
Where am i from? Southampton.
Not having a go at anyone, just contrasting the brand guidelines with what gets approved.
Why am i doing this? Because I have had designs not approved for these exact reasons. Therefore it would seem that judgements are based on more than the guidelines or there is another version of the guidelines that is not available to all.
The purpose is not to ridicule the designs, but to question the guidelines!
August 23rd, 2006 at 2:30 pm
Reading this back, I do think that the terms ‘dull’ and ‘boring’ are terribly subjective. Im not sure they ought to be in the guidelines at all to be honest!
August 23rd, 2006 at 2:41 pm
I agree whole-heartedly with that. Most of our covers, or web images are of the same thing over and over. But how the photo is taken or the image created leads to massive in variation in the final product. An image of a clock is not dull simply because it is an image of a clock.
August 23rd, 2006 at 2:54 pm