Branding Guidelines

Why are branding guidelines important?

In order to establish and maintain a consistent and professional identity to our external audiences, Cornell College and Cornell Rams Athletics have brand guides and usage restrictions for our logos and word marks. Our guidelines proper usage of Cornell's logo, colors, and associated images and templates. Please review our brand guides prior to using any college graphic or sharing them with an outside design resource. 

To protect our brand, Cornell has a licensing agreement with many of the vendors you might contact to create logo gear and those designs are seen by the marketing department for approval.

Cornell Style Guide

The grammar nerds in the Office of Marketing and Communications have developed a style guide for Cornell College-specific spelling, punctuation, and grammar (yes, we use the Oxford comma). It is intended as a reference by college employees and students for official college communications and is available on Google Drive with your Cornell login. If you have questions, suggestions, or possible additions, contact marketing@cornellcollege.edu.  

Cornell College Logos

Once you have a good understanding of how logos can be used, there are wide variety of logos available to the campus community for use on your presentations, social media, swag items, posters, and other materials. There are a few more things to be aware of before you start using a college logo.

File types for logos

.eps files are vector art, which makes them the best choice when you're sharing them with outside vendors who need to resize very large or very small. And almost all swag vendors will prefer an .eps file. .Eps files do not render on the web or in many software packages, but you can open them in design programs like the Adobe Creative Suite. When OMC shares .eps files with you we always include a .jpg or .png with the same filename for visual reference.  

.jpg files are raster art that does not allow for transparent backgrounds, and they are a file type that most people are familiar with. If you try to resize .jpg files, they will start to lose quality rapidly. They are, however, the best choice for using images for digital purposes like websites as they can be optimized for quick load times. You can view and use these files in almost all software packages.

.png files are also raster art, and they can be created with transparent backgrounds, and these are the best choice when you want to layer images over backgrounds. Like .jpg files, if you try to resize .png files they will lose quality. These files also tend to be larger than .jpg files so are a little slower to load. You can view and use these files in almost all software packages.

These are the three most common file types that OMC makes available to users. If your project or vendor requested something different, email marketing@cornellcollege.edu with the details of what you need.

CMYK vs. RGB

There are also color modes for logo files which are important to make sure you're getting the right color representation for what you're doing. And, to make matters worse, our purple is challenging to match! So, to get the best results possible:

CMYK is the color mode you want for anything being printed. Our logo files default to CMYK unless the file name specifically says 'RGB' in it. Insider tip: when you want to use Cornell purple along with the logo, choose PMS 7680 C.

RGB is the color mode you want for anything digital. We've made our main logos available as RGB options, but not the extended logo series, so please contact marketing@cornellcollege.edu if you need a web-version of a logo for your project.  Insider tip: when you want to use Cornell purple on the web, use #523178.

How many logos should you use when designing something?

One (1).

Really. One per view, one per page, one per swag item is the general rule. There are always exceptions, of course, you might want the athletics "C" and the athletics leaping ram on one piece, for example. However, one logo instance does the work of identifying that as Cornell College or Cornell Rams Athletics document. More isn't better (we promise).

Cornell College Logos   Cornell Rams Athletics Logos Mascot Logos

The office of Alumni and Advancement also has a suite of logos that are used for special purposes. Contact alumni relations to ask about using logos in that suite.