Resources and Guidelines

Our new identity provides a framework to convey UB’s distinctiveness and helps us align all of our schools and institutions under one official name. This message map acts as a guide for SEAS faculty and staff. It shows how we in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences can tell our unique story, while continuing to align with the university's brand attributes.

It is important to use university fonts whenever possible. However, our brand fonts may not always be available for use in Word documents, PowerPoint presentations and other digital applications.

Our school currently embodies eight departments. In order to ensure all eight departments are represented and that our color strategy is elastic enough for future expansion, we worked through the department colors first. Below is the school level (brand extension level) colors that represent our mood and tone, as well as our departments:

Each department within the school has a unique mood and tone. For example, the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering has a natural feel so we brought in earthy colors like greens and blues. The Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering has a more metallic feel with bronzes and grays. Electrical Engineering has a powerful feel with yellows and blues. See all department (sub brand) color palettes below.

Department colors have been vetted and approved by all SEAS department chairs.

Additional information about the UB color palette can be found on the UB Identity and Brand website, including color palette downloads, color ratios, and accessible text and color combinations.

All school and department level websites will utilize a blue header in the CMS. Centers, institutes and any other SEAS-related websites will be encouraged to use white headers, but it will ultimately be up to each website owner to decide. See examples below.

For website background images, we will utilize more simplistic patterns, if any. We want to keep clean lines and encourage the increased use of white space. Patterns, if used on the web, should be limited to 1a, 1b, 3a and 3b.

Whether still or moving, images are a powerful visual asset for helping us tell the rich, full story that is UB.

The school can assist in arranging professional photography and/or providing in-house photographers. If you have an event you would like photographed, submit your request to the SEAS Office of Communications at seascomm@buffalo.edu

Photos can also be used from the SEAS and UB photo databases.

Check out the Brand Photography Collections in UB's Photo Database. This is a great guide for choosing photos that align with the UB brand!

Tell the full story with wide, medium, and close up images. Be patient and wait for emotion and moments. Every event has a beginning, middle, and end. Try to capture the entire story.

• Remember the rule of thirds
• Fill the frame
• Use leading lines
• Watch for clear backgrounds
• Don't cut off limbs when photographing people

• Focus. Use short depth of field and selective focus on tight and medium shots.
• Framing. Incorporate large amounts of negative space to allow for the overlay of text in layouts. 
• Subject. Capture candid, authentic moments. Avoid overly posed or staged images. No looking directly at the camera. The exception to this rule is the Portrait category. People being featured in a more personal, in-depth or editorial manner can appear more posed and can be looking directly at the camera.
  
• Lighting. Bright, natural, directional light is always preferred. Studio lighting should be subtle. 
• Composition. Coverage options for focus and framing help build a strong library. Use both selective focus and full focus. Choose short, medium and wide framing options. 
• Abstract. Objects, especially a lot of the architecture on campus, can be captured in a more abstract manner, focusing on details and nuances rather than the entire structure.

Did you know about 17% of the university's student body is international? UB is in the top 1% of U.S. institutions for number of international scholars. International faculty and staff are a large and important part of our diverse engineering and science community. The guide and presentations below provide tips and tactics you can use to improve your communication to our diverse international audiences.