Introducing Spotlight
Spotlight is a new design language developed to support the Shine event, which will kick-start a campaign to put the spotlight on excellence in all parts of the music education sector.
With Spotlight people are at the centre. It has been carefully designed to be equally capable of representing the positive ambitions of the music education sector as a whole or amplifying the personal achievement of an individual.
The guidelines that follow provide practical information and inspiration for applying Spotlight in a consistent and powerful way day-to-day.
Colour Palette
The colours we use are bright and positive. There are four core hues, inspired by ABRSM’s own colour palette and they have been tweaked to provide a bold backdrop to every design asset created with Spotlight.
Each colour has two tone options, a darker primary hue which should be applied in most instances and a lighter secondary hue which can be used where some subtle contrast is desirable or a brighter colour will work better in the context of a particular design.
The darker tone should ideally always be used behind text to provide the maximum colour contrast. We have noted the contrast ratios of our primary colours used as a background with overlaid white text.
These colours can be used individually or combined in any number of ways to a range of complimentary and contrasting effects. While a single block colour provides great impact at a distance for materials such as posters, a dual tone effect can also be used to inject an additional sense of energy and works particularly well at a smaller scale.
Use of Images
Shine is all about putting people at the centre of ABRSM’s narrative about music education and our use of imagery reflects that. A unique image treatment helps to blend our images into the rest of the design, creating a striking effect that also provides a strong focal point.
The image treatment is created from blending together three layers; a colour fill, texture layer and greyscale musician photo. When using one of the pre-made design templates swapping in a new photo is as simple as removing the existing photo layer, dragging the new selection into place and choosing the ‘embed’ option in Adobe Illustrator.
We use natural feeling photographs of single subjects holding or playing musical instruments. Selecting images with their own sense of energy helps re-enforce the effectiveness of the overall design. Rather than using cut-outs we keep the background behind the musicians to inject some added texture to the design. In this context a light, fairly plain background works best.
To help speed up the process of creating new materials we have sourced a selection of appropriate stock images. These have been licensed for use in this particular campaign and so shouldn’t be used outside of this context or made publicly available in their original format.
Typography
Spotlight’s typography is clean and clear, just like we want our messaging to be. Consistent use of selected fonts and typographic styles is an important element in creating a strong identity that can build quick recognition with an audience.
Primary Typeface
Our primary typeface, Ingra, has a friendly, modern feel. It is an extremely adaptable typeface available in ten upright styles and three widths, providing plenty of options for creating typographic hierarchy within a design.
The Ingra font can be licensed for web and desktop use through Typekit.
Secondary Typeface
Plume is our secondary typeface, to be used whenever the content is in a voice other than ABRSM’s. Its distinctive character lends a softer more playful feel, but tempered by modern design principles that make it robustly legible.
The Plume font can be licensed for web and desktop use through Typekit.
Wordmark
Our wordmark is bold and confident. A block-caps style and simple letter forms help it punch-out of a range of backgrounds providing clarity at distance and impact up close. In this regard it shares some heritage with ABRSM’s own logo.
Some subtle shaping of the letters lends some extra character and mirrors the angular forms of the shafts of light that make up the spotlight element in the identity’s design.
The most common use for the wordmark is white against a colour or photographic background, as shown below. But in on-white situations it also has the option to take on some of the character of the wider design, with striking shafts of colour shining across the wordmark, as shown above.
You can download the SHINE wordmark in a range of print and web-friendly formats below. We have included some example colour treatments to provide additional inspiration and show some of the creative possibilities here.
#BECAUSEOFMUSIC
Social media is a key communications channel for the event and the campaign that is to follow, so using it effectively will be important to the success of both. Hashtags play a useful role in amplifying our message, linking together content in a way that makes it easier for our audience to discover and consume.
We want it to be something that everyone from students to policy influencers can feel confident adopting and our chosen tag has the flexibility to apply in a range of different contexts, from supporting a sector-wide issue or attached to the personal success story of an individual.
We use the the condensed style of our primary typeface in a blockcaps format to present the #BECAUSEOFMUSIC hashtag in designed materials. The musical notation symbol for sharps is used in place of a standard # symbol to make a subtle connection with music.
Our Partners
Collaboration and partnership are an incredibly important part of moving the music education sector forward and ABRSM recognises that to make a real difference it can’t act alone. The SHINE event is kindly supported by the Barbican and Classic FM and wherever space permits we should include their logos on communications relating to the event. This not just to acknowledge their support but also to demonstrate that SHINE is an initiative that has the backing of two respected arts organisations.
These organisations should be referred to as supporters and the presence of their logos on our materials should be accompanied by the simple phrase ‘Supported by:’
Please note that each of these brands have their own design guidelines which we should do our best to adhere to. All allow for a white-out version of their logo to be used on colour backgrounds - which is our primary use case - but have different guidance for use in other contexts. For ease of reference a copy of the brand guidelines for each are provided below along with the available logos in a range of formats suitable for print and web.
Bringing it all together
Together our colour palette, use of imagery, typographic style and wordmark combine to create a bold and positive-feeling identity. By ensuring that all these elements are consistently applied we can help to maximise the impact of our identity.
To help simplify the process we have created some sample materials that demonstrate the Spotlight design style being applied in practice and can be used as the starting-point for creating a range of online and offline assets.
Brand Assets
Wordmark
Both Print (CMYK) and Web (RGB) files
Stock Photography
High resolution pool of stock images
Illustrator Colour Swatches
CMYK and RGB colour swatches for Illustrator
Parter Logos & Guidelines
Logo files and brand guidelines for the Shine partners
Web Assets
Email Headers
600px x 250px
Event Booking Site Headers
900px x 250px
Facebook Event Cover Images
784px x 295px
Hashtags
1200px x 628px
Instagram Cover Images
1080px x 1080px
Mobile Headers
250px x 50px
Quote Cards
1200px x 628px
Social Sharing Images
1200px x 628px
Website Banners
1300px x 380px
Questions?
For assistance applying the Spotlight design style please feel free to reach out to Nick at The Pixel Parlour (nick@pixelparlour.co.uk).
© 2017 The Pixel Parlour 51.5°N 0.0°E - Greenwich, London