Brand Style Guides
Marketing & Communications

Our brand is the collective perception of Fort Lewis College by students, parents, faculty, alumni, peers, and the public. This guide is for anyone creating communication materials for the college. It is essential to follow these guidelines to maintain brand integrity.

Key principles

Consistency

Great brands are instantly recognizable and speak a common language to different audiences. Use established brand standards, including logo usage, color schemes, typography, and communication styles, to maintain a consistent look and feel across all media formats.

Unified voice

Adhere to these guidelines to ensure our brand remains strong and clear. Every communication opportunity is a chance to either strengthen or weaken the brand, making adherence to these guidelines paramount to the success of our brand recognition.

Brand personality | Color | Typography | Logos | Graphic elements

Brand personality

Our brand personality influences not only visuals but also how we communicate. For guidance on tone, storytelling, and strategic messaging, refer to the FLC Communication Style Guide.

Brand personality traits

Adventurous

Embracing new challenges and outdoor experiences

Supportive

Fostering acommunity of care and inclusion

Innovative

Pioneering new approaches to education and research

Authentic

Staying true to our values and student-centered mission

Resilient

Adapting to change while maintaining our core purpose

Color

Primary Palette

The blues and gold of Fort Lewis College's primary color palette are an important feature of the school's brand. Lead with these colors in all work so that our communications are focused and unified.

A range of secondary accent colors, inspired by the landscape around us and vibrancy of the FLC campus, works in conjunction with the primary palette to provide versatility and variety. These colors are meant to be used strategically. Be mindful of how you integrate these shades, making sure to give preference to the blues and gold.

Typography

Fort Lewis College uses two main typefaces in its visual communications. The first is Alfa Slab One, a slab serif that is assertive while also friendly and energetic. The second typeface is Univers, a font family with varying weights that also includes a Condensed style. Univers is contemporary and accessible, working perfectly in print or digital formats and nicely contrasting Alfa Slab One.

Typography 101

• Kerning: The individual horizontal space between each letter.
• Tracking: The horizontal space between a string of letters.
• Leading: The vertical space between lines of text.
• H1: An H1 header in print typically serves as the main title or primary heading on a page, drawing the reader’s attention and establishing the main topic.
• H2: An H2 header in print serves as a secondary heading, usually supporting or clarifying the main topic introduced by the H1. It provides structure within sections, breaking content into more digestible segments
• Letter spacing: The horizontal space between a string of letters.
• Line spacing: The vertical space between lines of text.

Case Style

We prefer sentence case (capitalizing only the first word and proper nouns) because it’s more accessible and easier to read. Unlike Title Case, which can slow down readability, sentence case supports a clear, approachable tone and keeps our messaging straightforward. This choice ensures our content feels friendly, consistent, and accessible to everyone.

• We limit uppercase to primarily H1 and H2 headings in our design materials.

Alfa Slab One

Alfa Slab One is considered a display font and should be used sparingly due to it's bold and heavy nature. It is best used for headers and subheaders. Best practice, use the font minimally to have the highest impact. Do not exceed a string of 25 or more characters to avoid weighing down your designs.

• Internal note, when working with robust design programs, set kerning to "optical" and tracking to 25 pts. This setting spaces the letters almost perfectly and requires little manual kerning.

Univers

Univers is your go-to font choice. With a wide variety of levels to choose from you are able to articulate your message with varying emphasis. For main body copy, stick with Light or Roman. The heavier weights are best for headings and should not be used within body copy.

• Internal note, when working with robust design programs, set kerning to "optical" and tracking to 0 to 200 pts depending on when and where it's being used. Smaller amounts of copy such as headers or subheaders with a high amount of tracking pair well with our display font offering great contrast. With large amounts of copy, tracking should not exceed 10 pts.

Univers Condensed

The condensed font weights should be used sparingly only as headers or subheaders. As with any condensed fonts, it can become illegible with larger amounts of copy.

• Internal note, when working with robust design programs, set kerning to "optical" and tracking to 10 to 30 pts depending on your font weight. As the font-weight increases, adjust the tracking toward the higher end of the range to maintain readability and balance.

Typography in the digital space

Alfa Slab One

Alfa Slab One should be used sparingly due to it's bold and heavy nature. It is best used for H1s only. Do not exceed a string of 30 or more characters to avoid weighing down your designs. The font size should never be smaller than 18pt.

• Letter spacing to .2 rem.

Graphic elements

Photography

The FLC Marketing and Communications photography team manages images through MediaValet. The photography team is excels at student portraiture and Southwest landscapes. Actual images of students and campus should always be prioritized over AI-generated or stock images.

Iconography

Incorporating icons into layouts is a great way to make content more visually appealing and easily digestible. Their interesting form help move the eye around and they're effective for breaking up large portions of text and images. 

FontAwesome hosts our icon library, including a custom kit with icons tailored for Fort Lewis College. We use two weights in the Classic style: light and solid. Classic light icons are preferred for their clean look in design, while solid icons are ideal as white fill on dark backgrounds. Using these styles ensures a consistent and polished appearance across all print and digital brand materials. 

Font Awesome icons

Light

Solid

Illustrated icons

If a more complex icon is needed, it can be made in Illustrator with the Pen tool. Create an icon in a 0.45 square-inch space with a 1 pt stroke weight. Some icons may be slightly taller or wider, but the scale should feel comparable. Once made, the strokes should be outlined before scaling up or down in size to keep icons consistent in weight and feel.

• Avoid sharp corners. In Illustrator, under stroke options, make sure to choose round join corners and round caps.

Mountain silhouette

Inspired by the landscape that surrounds Fort Lewis College, a series of mountain range shapes is a throughline in the visual language of the FLC Brand. This is a versatile design move. In one direction, the mountain silhouette can scale large and graphic, providing a sense of territory; and, in another direction, it can inject subtle branding to frame identity marks and/or calls to action. The mountain shape also acts as a container for photography and a device for bold color blocking.

These are available in our primary and secondary color palette.

Mountain line pattern

The mountain silhouette element is quite versatile and can evolve in new ways, seen here in the mountain line pattern. This pattern comes to life through mountain shapes in key line strokes, layered and overlapped together. Resembling heart-rate tracings or measurements of adrenaline, the varying mountain ridge shapes tangle together to feel kinetic and convey a sense of community.

These elements could be used to add texture to otherwise expansive color blocking. Make sure the contrast of the mountain line pattern are not disrupting the legibility of the copy on top of it. This graphic is most successful if used as a watermark and subtle hint in the background

Gradient mountains

The last evolution of the mountain silhouette is a pattern of mountain layers. The layers of mountain shapes can be stacked on top of each other in a random assortment or arranged in vertical tiers. By lowering the tint of every shape to 20–30% of the original color, the overall effect of the mountain shapes coming together creates a gradient effect that can either feel energized or ambient, but always provides depth and interest. When used in digital formats, consider how this effect can be more dynamic through animation or interactivity.