University of Iowa brand architecture establishes that all academic and administrative units are part of the university master brand and must align with the institutional visual identity.
Creating your lockup
- Use the lockup generator to create lockup files. 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.
- All approved lockups are searchable by category and can be downloaded as needed.
- Lockups should follow logo usage guidelines.
- Please contact osc-brand@uiowa.edu for assistance or questions.
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 the master brand.
- 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.
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 display multiple lockups together. Follow cosponsorship guidelines.
Don’t place lockups in logo tabs or shapes.
Don’t use lockups on websites. The logo is already in the brand bar, and the formal wordmark should be used in the footer.
Don’t use lockups on university stationery or campus signage. Use official stationery and signage templates.
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.
