University of Pennsylvania Web Style Guide

This style guide applies only to official University pages. Official University pages are defined as web pages on a University web server that have been created by the University, its schools, departments, or other administrative offices. It does not apply to web pages created by individuals, such as students or faculty members.

Every Penn web site contributes to the user's perception of the University. When a user visits the Penn web, they take away with them an impression of the University and its departments. To ensure a unified web presence, official pages of the Penn web should appear to be visually related in order to help promote usability and to reinforce Penn's brand identity.

As part of our branding strategy it is expected that all "high-level" or "cross-university" administrative offices will adopt the heavy branded templates in order to provide consistency of look and image for the University.

Although consistency is important, this style guide takes into consideration the fact that design standards may vary for individual departments and schools. There are several versions of branded templates to assist in the creation of your web site. While the variety of templates offered may reflect elements of the Penn homepage, there are no templates that duplicate Penn's homepage. Schools, departments, or administrative offices should not attempt to duplicate the homepage, which is intended as a unique gateway into the entire Penn web. If you choose not to utilize the templates, elements of the style guide, such as color and font standards, may be adopted for use in your design.

However, if you wish to make creative modifications to the templates, please contact University Communications in the early stages of redesigning your site.

While there is the option of choosing between several templates, there are certain required elements, which are outlined in the Required Elements section of the style guide.

In order to provide the University community with additional style options, new templates (Heavy and Medium Branded) have been created. We are soliciting feedback on these templates and encourage anyone with comments, concerns or suggestions to send an email to eschbach@upenn.edu. This style guide is using the Blue Side Menu with Gray Toolbar template.

Download printable version of Web Style Guide in Adobe PDF format.