Branding Guidelines

Our Brand

For more than 60 years, Black Hawk College has been an integral member of the western Illinois community and a leading provider of career training, and credit and non-credit education. It serves a diverse community of learners seeking to improve their lives. This community includes current and prospective students, parents, and guardians, community and political leaders, media, taxpayers and our fellow employees.

Over this time, a collection of experiences and perceptions have created an image in the community that is the Black Hawk College brand. Our brand is strengthened or weakened with every interaction that occurs, whether it is within the college or with the community at large. These interactions may be spoken, written, visual or electronic and should be consistent across all forms.

Consistency alone will not maintain a strong brand. Strong brands exist through brand attributes and benefits, organizational core values and brand character. Attributes are those things that come to mind when people think of our brand. Benefits are what our customers receive when they experience our brand. Our core values should live in our brand, and our character or personality should be visible every time someone experiences our brand.

We will employ several tools to communicate our brand, including our name, logo, tagline, fonts, colors and voice. This page contains guidelines and examples to better manage our brand through a variety of communications to our many audiences. Because we can’t anticipate every application of our brand, these guidelines are not intended to limit creativity but guide our communication efforts.

What is our brand?

A brand is the sum total of experiences, expectations, and perceptions that diverse individuals or groups have when interacting with Black Hawk College. This includes our internal brand – how employees feel about their experiences while working at Black Hawk College, and the external brand – how current, past and prospective students, their families, and the community feel about their experiences in dealing with the College.

Our Brand Ambassadors

Our employees (and retirees), regardless of job title or responsibility, are the frontline people who define our brand and give it value. Every interaction with a current or prospective student, parent, spouse, community member, elected official, member of the media, or fellow employee delivers an experience that builds and enforces our brand. Our biggest responsibility as employees is to live our brand.

Our Brand Promise

Our brand promise is to deliver the experience that meets the learner’s expectation and enables the learner to realize his/her unique potential.

What are brand standards?

Standards are an organized means by which the Black Hawk College brand can be clearly and consistently communicated to our audiences. They will help reduce confusion about what our brand stands for and what the community can expect from its relationship with the College.

Variation Exceptions

Logos should not be altered or changed from their original versions. The global symbol and identifier should always be displayed together in the original lockup.

The global symbol of the sparrow hawk may only be used apart from the identifier in some cases such as apparel, as a graphic in printed material or vehicle and equipment identity. If used separately from the identifier, it is recommended that the complete logo be used somewhere on the item. Otherwise, the identifier is to appear with the global symbol and is not to be used alone.

Examples of logo exceptions for using the sparrow hawk without the wordmark on two ballcaps.

Tagline

The tagline captures our brand promise and is a summary statement of who we are and what we deliver. It is a benefits statement. We believe education is key in providing the opportunity for growth and renewed life.

Alternate Taglines

It is tempting to create taglines for every occasion, department or event. However, this causes confusion in the marketplace and dilutes our message. Individuals and departments will not create or use taglines other than the College tagline unless approved in advance by the Marketing and Public Relations Department. The tagline is not used in a headline or copy and should only be used to enhance our brand image, not as a program or product attribute.

The tagline will only be presented in “Celebrate the Day” font (in print) with loose letter spacing and is not to be altered.