HOW TO ORDER NEW STATIONERY All supplies of existing stationery should be depleted before new supplies are ordered since the new design is compatible with the current design. The new stationery can be ordered via Printing Services. Orders should include a sample of the old stationery and/or all necessary information, according to Sheila Childers, supervisor of digital prepress. For specific guidelines and to view the stationery, visit (www.uh.edu/pp) and click on the stationery link. For additional details, call Monica Jimenez at 713-743-5906.

The University of Houston’s stationery got an extreme makeover recently.

It has been more than a decade since UH freshened up the stationery, and, by all accounts, it was time for a change.

“I went to the deans and said, ‘This stationery is clearly not working,’” said Wendy Adair, associate vice president for public affairs.

Adair knew it was time to reunite the campus with a redesign after learning that many business administrators and secretaries across campus disliked the interlocking UH logo in the letterhead’s margin and the address columns at the letterhead’s top right. She also learned that some deans and administrators had created their own stationery with their college logos.

To tackle the problem, Adair met with deans to ask if they would participate in the redesign project and appoint a representative to serve on a redesign committee. They quickly agreed, and she asked Watson Riddle, senior graphic designer in the Office of Creative Services, to lead the design project.

During the committee’s first meeting, Riddle managed to get a good idea of the changes needed and wanted, including more college identification, more stationery options and use of a typeface that was readily available on desktop computers. In the next meeting, he presented some options for consideration and then made additional changes based upon the committee’s suggestions. He submitted to the committee another design, which was met with immediate and unanimous approval.

The committee was “invaluable” in creating the new design, Riddle said.

“Without the committee, my job would have been impossible,” he said. “The input of the colleges’ secretaries was especially important. I literally wandered around campus talking to all the secretaries and wrote down all of their suggestions. This was the first time they had ever been asked.”

One of the changes that all committee members and secretaries suggested was the removal of the interlocking UH logo in the stationery’s left margin.

Riddle moved the logo to the top of the header and condensed the UH name, making it easier to read.

Producing a more aesthetically pleasing look was one of Riddle’s chores.

He found that matching the serif font, Times New Roman, with the sans serif of the UH name logo worked well. Rather than having the name and contact information at the top with the logo, Riddle moved the contact information to the bottom of the stationery and left room for the colleges to place their logo and/or the “Learning. Leading.” mark.

Thanks to this change, the college and department names and the contact information are more noticeable. Most importantly, both Riddle and Adair agree that of all the differences on the new stationery, this modification allows the colleges the flexibility and individuality they wanted.

“There was kind of a break-through, ‘aha’ moment when one of the faculty members from the College of Technology said ‘What if we just said the University of Houston owns the top of the stationery, and the department or the college owns the bottom,’” Adair recalled.

Another major request from the committee was to make the business cards easier to read and to print them on better paper. The new design calls for heavier cardstock and matches the letterhead with an emphasis on the individual’s name and organization.

The new stationery has two formats, one using the UH seal and the other using the interlocking UH logo. The UH seal has traditionally only been used for official academic events or announcements and the interlocking UH logo has been used for all other purposes.

The committee recommended that the university maintain the seal as an academic mark, limiting the stationery with the seal to use by the colleges and academic units. UH President Jay Gogue and his cabinet along with the deans approved the recommendation.

Each college has been asked to determine how it wants to implement the new stationery system, including the version using the seal. All supplies of existing stationery should be depleted before new supplies are ordered.

One committee member who is thrilled with the new stationery is Laura Vailas, College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics associate dean for institutional effectiveness and advancement.

“I’m very pleased with the new stationery,” she said. “It’s fresh, it’s modern, it’s easy to read, and it’s easy to use.”

Jennifer Jackson
Jmjacks3@central.uh.edu