G040 Lecture 04 Media and House Styles

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G040 Lecture 04 Media and House Styles

• Mr C Johnston
• ICT Teacher
• www.computechedu.co.uk

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Session Objectives

• Understand how graphics and other media can add
  impact to business communications,
• Understand what a house style is and components
  required to make one.

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Overview

• Graphics and other media can be used to draw
  attention to certain parts of your text and
  illustrate your points pictorially,
• White space is also important - use it to your
  advantage not ensure your work doesnt loot
  cluttered,
• Over use of graphics can be a disadvantage.

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Drawing Readers Attention
A handy way of making paragraphs and headings
stand out is to put them in a box. There are many
types of border.
An alternative is to put a shaded background on
your work.
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Drawings, Pictures and Clipart

• Drawings and pictures often enhance a document or
  presentation,
• A picture can be worth a thousand words,
• Pictures can either be vector based or bitmap
  based
• Vector graphics are built up with lines and can
  be easily reshaped,
• Bitmap graphics are made up of dots and loose
  their quality if you shrink / enlarge them.
• Clipart is digital images which are supplied with
  applications such as word processors and DTP,
• There is also a large number of images on the
  internet which can be downloaded,
• Charts can be drawn using spreadsheet and other
  graphic software,
• When using pictures they must be relevant.

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Company Logos

• A LOGO is a unique symbol or design that
  represents a company,
• Company logos form part a corporate image and
  colour scheme so documents are consistent,
• Examples of company logos can be found at
• http//www.logo-mojo.com/html/company_logos.html
• http//www.flyte.biz/portfolio/logos.html
• http//www.graphiclogos.co.uk/portfolio.html
• http//www.smartergraphics.co.uk/

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Other Media

• In online based communications you can take
  advantage of other media including
• Sound Effects
• Add impact
• Music
• Backing tracks to set the mood
• Animation
• Flash, Frame by Frame, Slide show effects

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House Style - Overview

• A house style or corporate image is a set of
  rules that help to create a consistent look to
  business communications,
• Often businesses will house style every document
  including envelopes, folders, brochures, business
  cards, advertising, websites, company vehicles
  and, of course, their products,
• The basis of a house style are company colours
  but other components are present,
• Most companies are recognised from there colour
  scheme or other stylistic features they use, long
  before you can read the company name on the
  material,
• This identity makes the organisation easily
  recognisable and strengthens its reputation.

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House Style - Definition

• The main purpose of house styles is that they
  ensure a consistent, professional look in
  documents and publications,
• They provide guidance in a usable form for staff
  and reviewers,
• They provide a core set of guidelines that apply,
  for all audiences,
• They form the basis for the development of other
  guidelines, including those on writing style and
  templates for documents.

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House Style - Components

• The main parts of a house style is colour scheme
  which few colours are going to represent it?
• From this a logo is developed using these few
  colours,
• Templates / letterhead will be included so that
  stationary conforms to the house style,
• Font style, size and colour will also be defined
  for a range of different uses e.g. headings, body
  text and lists,
• Rules regarding the use of bold, underline,
  italic will be defined,
• Rules regarding language use especially
  abbreviations may also be included,
• Creating styles in word processing and desktop
  publishing software help with text formatting.

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Topic Exercise

• Download and complete this topics exercise from
  my website.