Guidelines for the City Brand and Identity Guide

The brand and corporate identity guidelines provide you with a framework where you can chose elements of the city identity which you might be able to adopt for your organisation.

The identity is flexible enough for you to adopt part of it, or all of it depending on what your specific needs are.

There are two main elements of the city identity – the city font and the colour palette.

The font is unique to the city and provides a distinctive visual element for the city. It can already be found on signs, banners and promotional material and is an important part of the visual identity for the city as it can create a sense of being joined up and being part of something bigger than just the individual organisations in the city.

The other element of the city identity is in the use of colours.

Considerable research has been undertaken to identify the most appropriate colours for the city – originally developed for directional signs and maps, the colours have been extended for use on a range of media. There are a range of colours which can be used, so not everything needs to be in one colour. These colours should be used as the base colour for the material wherever possible, however within the overall flexibility of the identity, it can also be effective as a single element.

The key to this identity is flexibility – clearly each organisation has its own distinct identity and it is not suggested that this is replaced in any way. However this does work well where there are joint initiatives, events or activities which promote the city as a whole, or simply to link an organisation to the city overall.

Please contact Liz Kite at Southampton City Council if you would like more information (230 8083 3040) or Diane Wallace at the city council for design advice and guidance (023 8083 2720).