Brand and Accessibility Guidelines for VHCS Staff

  • Color Palette

    Color is perhaps the strongest driver of emotion and recall among all brand identity components. The official color palette of Vestavia Hills City Schools communicates our school system's commitment to excellence. Vestavia Hills City Schools' colors are Pantone 288 Blue and Pantone 200 Red, and have remained so since the school system's inception. Hexadecimal color values are shown below.

    Color codes

    Color Contrast

    Color contrast is very important for legibility. To ensure text is legible, do not use red text on a blue background or blue text on a red background. Dark text should always appear on a light background, and light text should always appear on a dark background. For the benefit of readers with color blindness, do not rely on color as a means of drawing attention to your text.

    color contrast illustration

     

    Typography

    An effective brand identity requires consistent typography across all produced materials. Vestavia Hills City Schools' brand identity maintains several typefaces for specific use purposes. Some of the fonts shown below are proprietary and available with permission from the VHCS Public Relations Office. Others are free fonts which can be downloaded and used without permission.

    Galliard
    The titles of the schools shown alongside the Institutional Logo are printed in Galliard. It should only be used in conjunction with the Institutional Logo.

    Galliard font

    United Serif Black
    The sport-specific words used in the Activities Logo and the 1REBEL Logo are printed in United Serif Black.

    United Serif Black sample

    Univers Condensed Bold
    Complementary words used in logo lockups are printed in Univers Condensed Bold. This font may also be used in headlines or to customize the primary marks for specific sports, clubs, or other school-affiliated organizations.

    Univers Condensed sample

    Alternate / Free Fonts
    The Roboto font family is a free, web-compliant font that may be used in VHCS communications along with the official fonts listed in the Brand Guide. Roboto is a recommended font for headlines and body text in documents, although it is not required. Roboto and Roboto Condensed font packages may be downloaded for free from Google Fonts. Download Roboto here, and download Roboto Condensed here.

    Roboto sample

    The font in use on all VHCS websites is called Mulish and is set by our website vendor. Download Mulish on Google Fonts here.

     

    Guidelines for Documents
    Use simple, easy to read fonts for headings and body text. The official VHCS Brand Guide recommends the Roboto font family for body text, but it is not required. In all cases, however, VHCS staff should use simple, easy to read fonts that are widely available such as Arial, Helvetica, and Times New Roman. Remember that a user's own device — not the designer — controls which font appears in documents, emails, and web pages.

     

    PDFs and Digital Documents

    Vestavia Hills City Schools recommends providing digital content in plain text that can be transferred onto a webpage or into an email. Websites and emails are more accessible and easier to read on a mobile device than files such as PDFs, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and Excel spreadsheets. If you must provide your content through a PDF or other digital document, please ensure the document follows the same brand accessbility guidelines as shown above. PDFs that are created by scanning a document (for example, on a copier) are strictly prohibited from publication.