VSU Brand Book

This VSU Brand Book is a product of a year-long work to create a brand for the Visayas State University. Officially formed in 2021, the VSU Brand Book Task Force started working immediately to put together the best practices of the university and its units in terms of branding.

Former ViSCA President Fernando A. Bernardo knew the importance of branding. When he started his administration in the 70s, he made sure the college had a beautifully crafted College letterhead for sending out letters to partners, agencies, and potential funders—letters that carried authority by just the way it looks.

It would only be decades after when the school would systematically organize guidelines and policies that surround branding into this material we dub as the VSU Brand Book.

This book aims to:

• serve as a guide to all VSU units in using the VSU seal and brand elements in communications, promotional/presentation materials, and products;

• promote versatility for cross-platform and cross-medium use;

• visually represent a unified VSU brand and identity.

The manual will also be used as a guide for institutions and companies that sign MOAs with VSU to use our logos and icons for various purposes.

The VSU Brand Book is divided into several parts, each intended to cover different areas of the VSU Brand.

The first chapter, VSU Seal and Logos, aims to clarify the rules that surround the use of the VSU Official Seal. We also define the specific contexts where we use the seal and where we prefer the use of the Brand Logo—a simpler version of the logo for use in more popular applications.

In the second chapter, we break down the different visual Branding Elements that the university must use in its multimedia materials. Here, we define how gold is gold, how green is green, and its specific numbers for web, screens, and print.

Then, we cover the different University Symbols in the third chapter. What icons, patterns, and items bring VSU to mind? We include the timeless Search for Truth statue, the Obelisks, as well as designs and patterns that have become synonymous with the VSU identity.

We put all the above together with a set of Visual Identity Guidelines as the principles are applied into specific media and platforms. How do our branding elements co-exist in partnerships? How should our stationeries, letterheads, and even business cards look? These are covered in this chapter.

We also found it fitting to give a special section for the VSU Centennial Branding, as the university celebrates its 100th founding anniversary in 2024. In 2019, we unveiled the Centennial Logo. As 2024 nears, the Centennial Branding will become more and more front and center in materials that we produce.

One aspect that is new to the university is Campus and Unit Branding, and we give special attention to this important matter. Since ViSCA became a university, colleges and departments have tended to their own visual materials, including logos, colors, and unit names. This is our initiative to unify how we present our units as one system.

Finally, the last chapters deal with guidelines on Publicity—like how we reference people in stories, how we respond to inquiries online, and how we release official statements—and then we touch on Academic Regalia and Sports. These however, will be expanded into more details in future editions of the VSU Brand Book.

Moving forward, the University Integrated Media Center (formerly the VSU Information Office) will continue to play a central role in further developments of the VSU Brand, along with other units, as it is stipulated in specific sections of this Book.

Our hope is that this Brand Book will help guide our colleagues in the university, as well as our partners in higher education, to take branding more seriously towards building a better visual image for the Visayas State University.