[el matteo]

I'm putting together a proposal for the school board to expand the identity our division is currently using across the entire school system. It's going to be a hard sell (these people don't understand the point of graphic design). Right now, there isn't a logo at all so we're in totally new territory.

It would be a huge help if anyone who has a little free time can download the proposal at http://www.bcbe.org/manual.pdf and take a gander at it. Most of my friends with an eye for design are all back at school, so I dont have many people who can give me an objective opinion.

Thanks!

[MacMerc.com]

Seems jim-dandy to me. I work with these kind of corporate standards booklets all the time with various clients I deal with at the agency. Do you want input on the design of the booklet or the standards you've set within it?

-Rick

[el matteo]

hey rick,

thanks for taking a look. this is my first shot at having to put together a manual. the problem is that all of this has always been inside my head, but now i have to let other people do design work too, and i have to communicate all of this to them effectively. i've been looking at it so long i dont know if it's understandable or not anymore. if you do have any feedback on the standards themselves, though, i'd be glad to hear it. i am always revising myself.

m.

[MacMerc.com]

One thing I noticed was that you base the required space around the logo on inches relative to the size of the logo (i.e.: if the logo is 1" then the space should be .25"). Is there some way that you can make that space relate to something in the logo? For instance, I believe Apple requires space equal to 1 "apple" around their logos. This way, people can easily tell if their logo usage is in compliace with the standards without having a ruler and a calculator handy. I'm going give it a more thorough look later today.

Email me and I'll send you my notes.

-Rick

[ 06-26-2001: Message edited by: MacMerc.com ]

[el matteo]

alright, i've made improvements based on rick's (and others) suggestions and it's already infinitely better. any other thoughts...especially about color and spacing related stuff, would be very helpful.

[MikeM32]

Very good over-all. From a typographers standpoint I'm not 100% about the choice of leading. But your paragraphs are well separated. It's just that at first glance it "feels" like either the point size of the body type is too small or the leading for the body type is too much. I can see the good and bad in this though. It has a very "loose" feel to it which definitely comes out frome the use of a very well spaced leading.

But I've been looking at Business Forms and Direct Mail materials for like 4 yrs, so take it with a grain of salt. The forms are very "tight", and we don't even design the direct mail stuff in our pre-press house. The forms are mainly our work however.

From a purely proofreading standpoint, I spotted what may be considerred a "widow" (a single word on the last line of a paragraph and a typographical "no-no") on page 13. I'm not sure if that applies to "BCBE" since it stands for something and is not a "word" per-se. I'd probably have brought the word "the" down with it to read "the BCBE".

At work we have a "Merck" corporate identity book similar to that. (Merck the pharmacuetical company). It's very similar, so your'e definitely onto it. Unfortunately I haven't seen a hell of alot of those Corporate Identity manuals/books to be honest.

Mike