The Student Life Communication (SLC) team is happy to assist you by providing a branding and accessibility design review to ensure your project aligns with UA and Student Life branding and accessibility requirements. Please refer to the following to determine whether divisional approval is required for your visual assets, and which projects may benefit from additional design assistance from our team.
Please review the SL Design Checklist before submitting a file for review.
Do Not Require Divisional Approval
SLC is always happy to review these assets, but it is not required. Be sure to use a color contrast checker as part of your design workflow.
- Social media posts
- If the post may be controversial or sensitive in nature, please reach out to SLC first.
- Learn how to create accessible social media content
- Items printed in-house for total audiences smaller than 100
- Internal (on-campus) slide decks (PowerPoint, etc.) that are used for
student and Student Life audiences — If your audience is on campus
but includes people outside the student/Student Life audience, please start with a provided
template and/or request a review from Student Life Communication (SLC). - Email communications sent to:
- Internal Student Life staff
- Student audiences of 1,000 or fewer recipients
- UA employees outside of Student Life audiences of 100 or fewer recipients
- External (non-UA) audiences of 50 or fewer recipients
- Urgent or emergency communications, such as rain plan or location changes, sent to student and UA faculty/staff audiences
- Functional groups, such as residents of an HRC community, all student leaders of registered student organizations and other operational or role-based groups (Contact Amy Nichols to determine whether your audience qualifies for an exception)
Divisional Approval Required
The following visual assets require divisional approval through the Design Approval Request form.
- Anything that requires University brand approval – divisional approval should be secured before you submit for brand approval
- This includes anything with UA logos or wordmarks and anything that utilizes University funds for printing
- University brand approval is the Strat Comm/Trademark Licensing/Procurement process in the “brand portal”
- New “looks” (often called “logos”) for divisional or departmental campaigns, initiatives or programs
- Any building or office signage (semi/permanent decals or wall art and/or flyers that are printed and displayed representing any Student Life department or initiative)
- Any items printed in house for larger audiences (approximately 100 or more)
- Buttons (including those printed in-house that might skip the University’s brand approval process)
- Digital signs
- Slides decks that include external audiences
- Content for UStore publication
- Newsletters distributed through UA’s email marketing platform (Emma), or through other platforms when sent to external audiences or groups of approximately 50 or more recipients
- Approval process is automatically included in Emma platform (please allow 2 business days for approval process). Other platforms will need to submit a request through Design Approval Request form.
- Email communications sent to:
- Student audiences of more than 1,000 recipients
- UA employees outside of Student Life audiences of more than 100 recipients
- External (non-UA) audiences of more than 50 recipients, including alumni, community members, donors and other partners
- Any audience when the email includes a give.ua.edu link or solicitation of any kind
- Urgent or emergency communications, such as rain plan or location changes, to external audiences of more than 1,000 recipients
Recommended to Request SLC Assistance with Design
For departments that do not have access to a full-time comm specialist and/or professionally trained graphic design student, it is recommended that you submit a communications request to SLC to create the following items:
- High impact pieces that have significant stakeholders (influential audiences) or reach (very broad/large audiences)
- Any building or office signage (semi/permanent decals or wall art)
- Other projects with longevity/reuse and wider impact:
- Looks/”logos”
- Departmental brochures or flyers
- T-shirt designs
- New campaigns
- Magazines