UM-Flint University Relations

The moment you have been waiting for: new business card and stationery designs with UM-Flint’s updated logo and wordmark!

Before you read on, please know that if you still have a stockpile of stationery with the old logo, please use it! Trees do not need to be sacrificed for the sake of the brand. This is a transition that should occur when your current stash of stationery is gone.

Now, the fun part:

We are pleased to offer new stationery and business cards with the updated logo. We know that some of you prefer to use the university seal. Please know that the seal can only be used for official University of Michigan Board of Regents’ actions. Even President Mary Sue Coleman has the university logo on her office stationery and business cards. The seal is simply not an option.

The decision regarding the new stationery template options and layout were made in an effort to establish consistency with brand and to reduce issues with content layout. In addition, the below stationery compliments the overall branding efforts between all three University of Michigan campuses. This stationery will be available through Printing Services and eventually included in the online template system, PRINTsprokit by fall 2013.

• One template for business cards includes a two-sided option for either additional text or the logo. The business card was designed to allow for multiple lines of text within the contact information and employee title areas. UM-Flint employees can determine what information they would like to appear on the cards. The design templates are a guide for where the text should appear.

Optional Back of Business Card

• There are two stationary designs. One has the university wordmark at the top, with the recommendation that it be used for all external communication when it is important to represent the university, not just a department. The second design has the department logo at the top, with the recommendation that it be used internally or for communication where the department information is the priority. Departments should have a supply of both.

Official University of Michigan-Flint Letterhead

Official University of Michigan-Flint Department Letterhead

• One envelope design that can be used with either stationary version.

Official University of Michigan-Flint Envelope

The new UM-Flint logo updates continue!

The University of Michigan-Flint license plate with the State of Michigan has been updated to include the new logo:

The UM-Flint license plate sales benefit student veterans and can be purchased on the Secretary of State website.

The first-ever HighEdWeb Michigan conference is coming to Flint’s Riverfront Center in just a matter of days. This is an exciting opportunity to learn from peers working in higher education throughout the region. Preeminent content strategist Kristina Halvorson’s keynote address alone will be worth the price of admission. The two-day conference is also packed with presentations focused on aspects of higher education which you may have thought nobody else was wrestling!

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It’s been a few weeks since you’ve heard anything from University Relations about the big “website transition” project. In our Web Transition Workshop this March, we explained how we’re planning to tackle to move to Drupal and the redesign of www.umflint.edu. Since then, work has been done to finalize the designs for our new website.

The mock-ups below include a samples of the new UM-Flint homepage and a general landing page. The final product may vary some after development, but we’re pleased to share with you the direction we’re heading.

Draft of Home Page (Desktop)

Responsive Homepage Draft on Various Devices

Draft of Content Page

These and other layouts are now being finalized, and templatized within Drupal. Once that is completed, we will announce the schedule for migration which will begin in late June/early July. Keep up with the University Relations blog for updates.

Thank you to all who attended the Google Analytics presentation last week with Matthew Adams from the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts Web Services. Matthew has shared his slides from the session, which are posted below.

Google Analytics Slides

If you’d like to have a Google Analytics profile set up for your department, you can fill out the following form to submit a request to ITS.

https://formassembly.umflint.edu/1769

Here also are links to some upcoming training opportunities that were mentioned during the workshop.

• HighEdWeb Michigan: http://mi.highedweb.org
• Cardinal Path Google Training in Detroit: http://training.cardinalpath.com/locations/

Thanks again and, as always, University Relations welcomes your questions and comments.

As we all move forward with both the new brand/identity roll out, as well as the web transition to Drupal, it will be increasingly important to be on the same page as far as the terminology we use to described various items, actions, and ideas.

The following are some of the more immediate terms (and uses) we should get a handle on:

The Official UM-Flint Logo:

Proper Use of this Logo:

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As part of our ongoing effort to make UM-Flint’s transition to the Drupal content management system as smooth, inclusive, and informative as possible, University Relations invites you to attend this free webinar on a key concept:

Embracing Brand-Driven Content Strategy

“Before social, multichannel, responsive, etc., there was content. And it’s still a challenge. Even if content strategy isn’t your job, content is probably your problem — and probably more than you think.”

Presention by Margot Bloomstein, author of Content Strategy at Work

Date: Thursday, April 18th
Time: 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Location: Ontario Room, UCEN

(No Registration or RSVP necessary. Just show up!)

Update: Video & Slides of Presentation Now Available

• Original Webcast Video

• Slides from Original Webcast

The purpose of the following report is to identify trends in community behavior across the University of Michigan-Flint’s social networks. The content shared on Facebook and Twitter was categorized into topic types, which are fairly consistent between the two. The only exceptions include: Response and User Content on Twitter (not used on Facebook).

Social Network Summary

Facebook

The University of Michigan-Flint Facebook Page had a total of 9,436 likes as of March 31, 2013, an increase of 558 (6.3%) in the three-month period. During this time, posts categorized as Emergency/Closure achieved the greatest reach and impressions, as well as the most consumption (clicks within a post). Aside from campus closure updates, which are rare, University Updates (i.e. new logo announcement, virtual tour launch, etc.) consistently achieved high reach, impressions, and consumption. In terms of media type, text-only status updates achieved the greatest reach and impressions, and were also high in post consumption.

Twitter

UM-Flint’s Twitter account was followed by 2,336 people users on March 31, an increase of 273 (13.2%) for the quarter. @UMFlint was mentioned by users 7.2 times per day, and the account averaged 2.2 tweets per day. The #umflint hashtag was used 1,460 times (927 tweets; 533 retweets). Keywords related to UM-Flint were used 4,162 times (2,841 tweets; 1,321 retweets). When measuring consumption based on links clicked, links categorized as University Update were most often clicked. This behavior is consistent with Facebook data.

Instagram

UM-Flint’s Instagram account, which is managed by the Students@UM-Flint team, posted 209 before the end of March. The account has 150 followers. The account was activated in August 2012.

YouTube

Videos on UM-Flint’s YouTube channel were viewed 3,852 times. The majority of these views, or 49.8% were viewed on YouTube’s watch page, followed by 27.9% on embedded players (i.e. umflint.edu), and 18.1% mobile devices. The most-watched video, which is embedded many places on the UM-Flint website, was “Why UM-Flint” with 612 views.

Students@UM-Flint

Between January 1 and March 31, the Students@UM-Flint blog had 1,140 unique pageviews. Direct traffic and organic search accounted for the top traffic sources, followed by the UM-Flint website and social media links.

UM-Flint Social

In this quarter, social.umflint.edu had 343 unique visitors and 2,870 pageviews. Visitors viewed the Facebook tab most often, followed by Twitter and then Instagram. The Blogs tab, which aims to give campus blogs some visibility, had 397 pageviews.

Social Media Activity By Content Type

I am a fan of XM radio. One of my favorite stations is The Bridge, which is nothing but the music of the singers/songwriters of the 1970s. I don’t care if it dates me, but I love that channel.

Driving into Flint today, I heard Paul Simon’s, “Slip Sliding Away.” You know, the nearer my destination, the more I thought about our website sliders slip sliding away.

Yes, the infamous sliding images (known as “sliders”) on the UM-Flint homepage will be history as of October 1, 2013. And I’m sad about it.

Those sliders meant a lot to me. They showcased beautiful graphics work. They highlighted important events and features. They made the website look pretty.

But, alas (yes, I think the end of sliders warrants the use of “alas”), the sliders will soon be a distant memory. Like Hostess brand snack foods.

The reason for this change is quite simple: the new website will be more responsive. In its responsiveness, that means that people browsing the site will have better experiences on whatever device they’re using. With responsive designs comes the responsibility to be less focused on tons of images and widgetry. It truly means that less is more.

So instead of sliders on the home page, we will determine an appropriate Hero Image that will change regularly to highlight some aspect about the university. This image might show the work of faculty research. It could promote an event. It might even point out an important fact/statistic about the university. And it will never move.

I tried to persuade my staff that maybe we were being a bit too hasty in dumping the sliders. I argued that it was a great way to showcase lots of information. I even said, “Well, everyone else does it.”  To their credit, the staff talked me down. They wisely referred me to the latest user experience research that showed that people do not generally click on those sliding images. Even worse, people have learned to ignore those images since they are usually junk.

See for yourself:

• “Don’t Use Automatic Image Sliders or Carousels, Ignore the Fad” by Peep Laja
• “Carousel Interaction Stats” by Erik Runyon
• “Slide Rules” by Matt Griffin
• “Auto-Forwarding Carousels and Accordions Annoy Users and Reduce Visibility” by Jakob Nielsen

I couldn’t argue with the evidence. I had to let it go.

That’s the thing about the web. It is always changing. But as it changes, people are finding that what they appreciate most about websites is function over form. The pretty is not as important as the practical. We are busy human beings, and we just don’t have the time or the interest to watch visual slideshow dynamics. We just want the information we are seeking so we can get on with other important things in our lives.

Jen Hogan

Many updates and changes are taking place with the release of the new University of Michigan-Flint logo, colors, and typography. One major change is with the registered university mark. The University marks are registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Previous logo guidelines required the circle R (®) designation (some people are now calling “the R-ball”) at all times. As of March 28, the R-ball will only be required on sales merchandise, all other platforms and usage will not require this distinction. Meaning, if you are not placing the logo on an item to eventually sell, then the R-ball is not needed. The below images show how the logo looks with and without the registered mark.

Only required on sales merchandise.

For promotional items, advertisement, multimedia, and internal documents