Brand Standards and Visual Identity Guidelines

CSF Brand Voice

Below are the principals for brand voice for Content Strategy Forum.

Celebrate Our Diversity

Inclusiveness, diversity and individual expression are crucial to a healthy forum. Our voice is clear but humble, direct but respectful. We love the global web of cultural and technical viewpoints our audience presents, and seek to foster durable community bonds by speaking and listening respectfully.

Communications Guidelines

• Ensure pronouns are neutral or genders are represented equally. For LGBT references, follow this media reference guide from GLAAD.
• Eliminate colloquialisms or culturally narrow cliches that may be misinterpreted or misunderstood by our international audience.
• Design visual media with diversity in mind.

Educate without Ego

Our chief goal is to create a haven of learning for content strategy professionals, whether fresh to the field or experienced veterans. Our voice is opinionated but receptive, educational but not lecturing. We borrow the best from academia: a quiet space to teach, share, debate and learn amongst a swirl of cultural perspectives. We probably have patches on our elbows and at least one of us smokes a pipe.

Communications Guidelines

• Writely plainly and clearly.
• Use the best word to explain the concept at hand, and when it's technical or heteroclite¹, define it for the audience.
• Invite discussion with calls to action, either to our forum or through direct email contact.
• Employ descriptive, annotated illustrations to explain ideas.

Exemplify Community Globalness

We are contributive and positive citizens of the global community, operating transparently to nurture the content strategy discipline. Our voice is confident but not reckless, sensitive but not pandering. We seek and celebrate the wisdom of our peers. Operating beyond borders is the foundation of our community.

Communications Guidelines

• Write in first and second person for inviting engagement.
• Cite and link to relevant or exemplary works from the global content strategy community beyond CSF.
• Use active verbs and remove hyperbole for more for accurate translation. (This CSF article contains helpful tips on writing for machine translation.)

¹ 'Heteroclite', of course, is an example of what not to do.

Color

Typography

'Share' is a display font used in page titles, first-level headings, and the CSF logo wordmark. Because of its dense, narrow character shape (and lack of bold or italics), it should not be used for any body copy or small point size.

'Neuton' is the primary CSF font for use in body copy and lower level headings. Appropriate for print and web use. Includes italics.

'Open Sans' is the complementary sans serif for captions, chart and diagram labels, or other situations that require maximum legibility at small point size.

Logo

The Content Strategy Forum logo is used across all communication from the organization, and is the unifying mark for our many projects, properties and social channels.

Logo Versions

Full-Colour Logo

Mono Logo

Dot Pattern

Clear Space and Minimum Size

The logo should always have a cushion of clear space on all sides. The edges of the logo should never touch other elements in the layout.

The logo should never scale smaller than 150px width in digital environments or 3 cm width in physical environments.

Incorrect Usage

To maintain visual fidelity and brand continuity across our communication, please do not modify, manipulate or jeopardize the integrity of the logo. Including, but not limited to:

Download

Master logo assets are housed on Github, where you can download individual files or a single master ZIP archive.

Conference

The CSForum conference logo and identity is derivative and complementary to the master CSF logo. The same rules of correct and incorrect usage apply.

Brand Names

Content Strategy Forum

The umbrella brand name. While this used to mean only the conference, it now represents the 'global community' (ergo the brand tagline), which is coordinated by the umbrella crew.

CSF

The abbreviated form of Content Strategy Forum. Largely interchangeable as long as 'Content Strategy Forum' is used at least once in the communication.

CSForum

The label for the conference. It is widely recognized and understood to specifically mean the conference. For that reason, it will remain as a key label for annual conference organizers to use (e.g. 'CSForum 2016', '#csforum16', etc.). For clarity, it is generally helpful to add references to the conference or event when using CSForum.