Athletics Unlimited put me contact with many athletic directors and school administrators who get shirts through the company, many of whom like the logos enough to purchase them from me or request other side projects. Mesa Verde was my first full style guide project and I wanted to give them a clean, professional look to brand their school.

PAGE 1

Page 1 shows their approved school colors in formats preferable for screen printers, web developers and basic graphic printers alike. They also have 2 primary pre-chosen fonts and a few wordmarks in those approved fonts. Mesa Verde also wanted a few two-toned options to emulate Miami (the U) without copying them directly.

PAGE 2

Page 2 gives the user of this style guide a few layout options on 3 different colored backgrounds to allow for variation, while maintaining consistency. Often you see basic style guides that fail to show the user how the text and logos should change background to background so I wanted to make sure I covered all the bases, leaving the user with little to no questions about how to correctly use the text.

PAGES 3&4

Many high school level style guides fail to articulate a logo's usage at the screen printing level and I sought to solve that with Pages 3 & 4 of mine. In most cases, the cost of printing goes up per color and it's helpful for both the school and the printing company to be able to see all of their options on one sheet to make the best choice for price, garment color and ink color. These pages can also be helpful for coaches ahead of time who are trying to visualize what they want their uniforms to look like before it comes time to order.

PAGE 5

When giving multiple options, you must also set multiple boundaries. If a school pays for consistent branding it behooves them to also outline what they deem to be "inconsistent" and therefore not allowed for printing or decoration of any kind. The most common thing I see happen on the printing end is what I call "bastardization" of a school's logo, wherein a student will create the artwork and send to a printer using an inverted or stretched mascot that does not comply with the school's style guide. I again sought to alleviate this issue by making sure I included a page of restrictions to complete the guide.