HOT OFF THE PRESS: The FCPL Brand & Style Guide

Submitted by Leslie Marinelli

The time has finally come to unveil the long-awaited FCPL Brand & Style Guide! 

Keep reading to find out where to get it, why it matters, and what files you should immediately delete! 

Successful branding creates a positive public perception of an organization. This is so much more than just putting a logo in the right place. Our brand is the sum total of how our patrons perceive FCPL. Consistent, professional branding is how we shape that perception, build trust, and increase public awareness. 

The FCPL Brand & Style Guide defines not only our visual style standards (logos, fonts, colors, etc.), it also covers a wide range of editorial style conventions and communications guidelines.   

This guide will answer all your burning questions such as:

• Is it ‘Libby’ or ‘LIBBY’?
• Should there be an apostrophe in ‘Friends Bookstore’?  
• When should I capitalize ‘library’? 
• One or two spaces after a period? 
• What's our preferred way to indicate time: 9:00 a.m., 9AM, 9:00 A.M., etc.?  
• When do we include the "www" for websites? 
• Oxford comma... yes or no? 

But wait! There’s more. 

We also included photography standards, display standards, email guidelines, QR code standards, and more. There's even a section about using inclusive language. This is a living document and will certainly evolve over time, but it’s a very thorough start.  

There’s one catch though…

Brand and style guidelines aren’t much use without a unified, consistent set of high-quality logos. 

Most of our original logo files have been altered, replicated, and compressed over the years. I reached out to the designer who created our logo package 12 years ago and got us a whole new pristine set of original, full-sized logo files in multiple colors, layouts, and file formats. 

Please delete all the logo files you have stored in your Z:/ drive or in your Canva uploads. Trust me on this. The newly obtained original logo files are so much bigger and crisper than anything we’ve all been using. 

The FCPL Brand & Style Guide and all the new (original) logo files are all now located in the “Logos and Branding” shared Google Drive. Check it out and let me know what you think!