All academic and administrative units, research centers and institutes, and outreach units are united under the university brand and benefit from clear and consistent association with each other and the institution as a whole. To strengthen these connections and advance the Iowa brand, all organizational units are required to use an official lockup as an identifier.
Lockup guidelines
To establish consistency and reinforce our connection with one another among our key audiences, all organizational units are required to use an official lockup as their identifier.
- Don’t attempt to create lockups outside the system or embellish a lockup in any way.
- For flexibility, units may choose to include their full unit name or drop the prefix when a more concise form of identification is useful. For example "Department of Mechanical Engineering" can be shortened to "Mechanical Engineering." Use the full unit name when it is important for your audience to know the office behind the communication, or to clarify a point of contact. Use the informal version when your audience is already familiar with you.
- Not allowed: acronyms, all caps, ampersands, special characters, and taglines (per the editorial style guide).
- Lockups will be provided as SVG vector files in black, gold, reversed, and two-color options. SVG files can be opened in Adobe Illustrator and converted to the file formats of your choice. Tools such as cloud convert are also available.
- All lockup submissions will be reviewed by the Office of Strategic Communication. Once approved, they will be available for download in the lockup library.
- All approved lockups can be searched by category or keyword and downloaded as needed.
- Lockups should follow logo usage guidelines.
Things to keep in mind:
- Keep it simple. Adding multiple levels of hierarchy makes lockups overly complex. When organizational hierarchy is necessary, it must be limited to only two levels.
- Lockups are not limited to major units. Any unit, subunit, or program can have a lockup to show direct connection to Iowa. Strategic guidance will be provided by brand managers to ensure a consistent approach within your unit.
- Eliminate redundancy. Since lockups include the block IOWA logo, don’t include “Iowa” or “University of Iowa” in the unit text of your lockup. For example, “Iowa Memorial Union” should be entered as “Memorial Union” to avoid redundancy.
Request a lockup
Unit brand managers have access to a lockup generator to create and submit lockups. Lockup requests should be directed and submitted through your unit brand manager to ensure a consistent approach across your organization. All lockup submissions will be reviewed by the Office of Strategic Communication.
Usage examples
Use your lockup when unit identification is valuable to the audience. Use over solid fields of black, gold, or white.
When a logo tab is used over a full-bleed cover photo, use your lockup on the back cover.
Use your lockup on promotional merchandise and apparel.
Lockups may be used over dark-black, full-bleed photos. Don’t use lockups over colorful photos.
Place your lockup in a solid field of black or gold when colorful, full-bleed photos are used.
Use lockups to prioritize your messaging instead of your unit name. Keep lockups small.
Lockup restrictions
Don’t use lockups as a title or masthead. Messaging should be prioritized instead.
Don’t place lockups in logo tabs or shapes.
Don’t use lockups on websites. The logo is already in the brand bar and unit identification should be displayed as plain text.
Don’t use lockups on university stationery or campus signage. Use official stationery and signage templates.
Don’t create taglines or place messaging with your lockup so that it appears as a tagline. Don’t add contact information.
Affinity lockups
Affinity lockups are limited to colleges and approved administrative units and affinity groups. Names must be abbreviated to one or two words and are limited to 25 characters (including spaces). Acronyms are not allowed.
Requests for affinity lockups must be submitted through your area brand manager and approved by the University Brand Committee. All affinity lockups will be created by the Office of Strategic Communication.
