Branding Style Guide

Introduction

This style guide is loosely based on the original OOo style guide produced by Bernhard Dippold and Steven Shelton back in 2005, with added elements from the Visual Design pages of the UI project, updated to reflect our being part of the ASF community.

This guide is produced for a number of reasons, but the main one is to achieve a consistent look to present to the world across all media, whether print or electronic.
The aim is to achieve a high level of brand recognition with a brand that reflects the values and strengths of the project and product.  This is achieved by ubiquity, consistency, uniqueness, quality and recognisability

The challenge faced by the Community is to achieve quality and consistency when pieces are being produced by volunteer artists, most often working alone . Not only are there issues in matching fonts, text styles, and other elements of design, but there are also technical issues surrounding different colour standards for different media.

For this reason this Style Manual will be here to assist artists in creating promotional pieces that will have a unified look and feel, as well as render and print consistently. Each change in version and style would require the manual to be up dated, so specific pages will be added for each new release and completed in a timely manner well before feature freeze that allows any new style elements to be integrated into the release and so any style updates will speak to marketing materials for that release.

Pallet

Short Term Pallet for 3.4 release

Pallet is yet to be defined, however for the first ApacheOO release, consensus is that retention of the latest Oracle OOo colour pallet is the best course.

OOo3 Visual design covers most of the colour elements.

The above are usage cases, desirable and undesirable within the range of the pallet.  It should be noted that the Pantone equivalents are a black art.  CMYK to Pantone translation is a hit and miss affair that is dependant as much on the process and print media as the actual ink, so any print jobs should be matched visually in the first instance with the Printer's swatches on the actual media. 

Future Pallet

For ApacheOO 4.0 (If we retain the present version sequencing) there will need to be a new Pallet drafted to give the brand a new lift. Historically the pallet has changed through various shades of blue from the beginning of the OOo project with each new release bugs have come and gone and new design elements introduced. There is no reason that the 4.0 release should not have a entirely new brand, new bugs, new style, to signal a new beginning.

Logo

Logo Usage

It is recommended to use the logo without modifying it, although you will probably have to scale it down to the appropriate size. Remember the proportionality of the logo when you rescale it and use the appropriate logo for your purpose (with or without the version designation) as previously discussed. Any modifications to fit a specific use case that has not been anticipated should be discussed on the marketing list

Please bear in mind that the logo is a complete package: all of the elements are essential.

Modifications/Additions to the Logo

Modifications of the logo are discouraged as being in conflict with the basic purpose of having a logo: to reinforce a recognizable, memorable “brand.” Except under very special circumstances, the logo should not be modified to display with different fonts, colours, or elements than those currently included in the adopted version.

Bugs

The bird or "Seagull" element of the OpenOffice.org logo may be used as a “bug” (design element to be incorporated into background images, icons, bullets, etc.)
in either black, gray, or RGB 14:133:205 (or its CMYK or Pantone variants). It should not be used in any other colour except when referring to a specific component of the suite, in which case it should be rendered in the colour that matches the icons of that component. (For instance, the “Impress” bird bug could be rendered in RGB as R249, G101, B1; “Calc” as R157, G201, B21; and so on. See the section on “colour Usage” for more details.) However, the complete logo should be included somewhere within the piece.

“wire gulls” or “wireframe gulls” have been used in the background of the splash screen from OpenOffice.org 2.
This design is available from here  in both raster and vector formats. While the wire gulls are not part of the official logo and should not be used as a “bug”, they do make an attractive background for both print and web pieces. Artists are encouraged to use the wire gulls in this manner. The wire gulls may be cropped and scaled (and will likely have to be cropped or scaled in most usage), but as with the OpenOffice.org logo, any resizing should be proportional (if the wire gulls are scaled to 45% horizontally, they should be scaled to 45% vertically). General colour usage guidelines apply: under most circumstances, the wire gulls will probably be rendered in black or RGB 14:133:205 (or its CMYK or Pantone variants and screened to approximately 30%, but a different colour might be appropriate in some contexts (for instance, a piece promoting a specific OpenOffice.org component).
Be aware of rendering problems when printing the wire gulls: at 100% of its normal size (704 x 546 pixels), the line width of the graphic’s smallest line is 0.01 pixel and the thickest line is 1.0 pixel. Scaling the graphic down significantly will make these lines nearly impossible to print on a press or printer, and may cause the lines to be invisible or “fuzzy” when displayed on a computer screen. 

The Orb is a very recent bug added during the maturation of the 3.X series.  Very usable as is and is up on the visual design page.

Future bugs may come into common use as part of the new Apache OpenOffice branding, however these must reflect the project and product and must be approved by the community before they are added to the style guide.

Text

Because of the many different uses of text in promotional and marketing pieces (ranging from full-featured brochures over simple web banners to Impress presentations), guidelines for the use of styles in text are, for the most part, just those: guidelines. They are to be considered when creating a design, but are nothing like canons that must be followed. Before deviating from the guidelines, however, any artist working on an OpenOffice.org piece should consider the following factors:

• How consistent with other Apache OpenOffice pieces the art will look;
• The nature of the piece (in general, text-heavy pieces should be more consistent);
• The goal of the project to create a unified, professional image;
• The “look” of the piece; and
•  Readability of the copy by the target audience.

It may or may not be appropriate for a designer to vary from the standards based upon these factors. In the end, the decision is ultimately that of the designer, but more consistent and attractive pieces are likely to have greater distribution and impact.

These are only the barest of styles. Additional styles should probably be created for picture/table captions, page numbers, cover page titles, and so on. Community input needs to be solicited before any recommendations can be made on these. The fonts chosen are all available, mature open source fonts. Because the fonts used in legacy OpenOffice.org logos ( Frutiger Bold Condensed and  Frutiger Condensed) are not open source or even freely available, the decision was made to avoid using this font on the heads and subheads.

Bitstream Vera Sans was chosen as the heads/subheads font for several reasons:
There was a great deal of discussion about using Bitstream Vera Sans in creating the next version logo, this is a font that is similar in look to Frutiger Condensed, it is freely available, and so on. The 78% scale width was intended to enhance its similarity to Frutiger Condensed.

Bitstream Vera Serif was chosen for the body text for the following reasons: it is a freely-available open source font, as a serif font it has higher readability and clarity (a lower case “l” will never be mistaken for an uppercase “I”, for example), it is distinct from more commonly used serif fonts (such as Times, Garamond, or Schoolbook), and it allows the heads, subheads, and logo to stand out.

It should be noted that the Bitstream family of typefaces are under a restrictive license.  While this is not in fact an issue under Apache policy, from a consistency point of view a Typeface with a license that is more in line with Apache philosophies would be preferable.    

Font sizes for the different text styles (headings 20 pt, subheadings 16 pt, body text 12 pt, for example) are not currently designated because of the great variety of pieces that could be created. (For instance, a trifold brochure would obviously need to use a different font size than an 8.5 x 11 multi-page manual for body copy.) However, it may be desirable to create base “standards” that can then be used as a reference point for proportional changes.

Main Headlines

Main headlines (the top-level headlines) should have the following
characteristics:
Font: Sans Serif, bold
colour: RGB 14:133:205 (or its CMYK or Pantone equivalents)
Font Effects: Small capitals
Scale Width:100%
Alignment: Centered
Indents: None
Spacing: 0.5 inches (or 1.27 cm) below
Line Spacing: Single
Position: Normal

Subheads

Subheads should be progressively smaller the deeper they go. In general, they
should have the following characteristics:
Font: Sans Serif, oblique (not bold)
colour: RGB 14:133:205 (or its CMYK or Pantone equivalents)
Font Effects: None
Scale Width: 100%
Alignment: Left
Indents: 0.25 inches (0.64 cm) - or match body text
Spacing: 0.25 inches (0.64 cm) below, same space above (except when following
main headlines, when there should be no additional space above)
Line Spacing: Single
Position: Normal

Body Text

Body text makes up the bulk of a printed piece. (You’re reading “body text”
right now.) In general, body text paragraphs should have the following
characteristics:
Font: Serif
colour: Black
Font Effects: None
Scale Width: 100%
Alignment: Left
Indents: 0.25 inches (0.64 cm)
Spacing: 0.25 inches below
Line Spacing: 1.5 Lines
Position: Normal

Colour Usage

Colour according to output

One of the most persistent problems plaguing the art project has been the consistent use of colour. This is largely because of the inconsistencies in the way that different colours are rendered by different applications, and different processes. The following chart is a  guide to maintaining consistent colour usage.  The values are for the Apache OpenOffice 3.4 release:

Component Colours

Apache OpenOffice has 6 components: Writer (word processor), Calc (spreadsheet), Impress (presentation editing), Draw (vector art editor), Math (formula editor), and Base (data­base). In addition to the overall colour schemes, each component has its own associated colour. When promoting the complete suite, the standard colours should be used. When promoting a specific component, how­ever, it is often desirable to use the colour associated with that component for some elements. The following chart lists colours associated with specific com­ponents: