If you require guidance or advice on your self-directed projects, please feel free to reach out to our team member, Rae Stilwell. Please note that assistance is subject to time availability, as our team member handles multiple responsibilities. They will do their best to provide you with the support you need within their capacity.

Follow UofL Branding Guidelines

Before designing your own print pieces, make sure you know how to stay within brand guidelines. This helps keep your work professional-looking and consistent with UofL’s brand. The UofL branding website provides the branding guidelines you need for logo usage, color palettes and font selection.

Visit the UofL Brand website
Brand toolkit

Whether you’re looking to show your pride with a new UofL background for your phone or needing to get a jump-start on creating marketing materials, look no further: OCM office provides a wide array of file types and formats for our faculty, staff and students to use.

• Brand Templates, e.g. annual reports, brochures, certificates, signage and banners, email signature tool, event and research posters, fact sheets, holiday cards, meeting agendas, nametags, Word/Excel/PowerPoint docs, table tents, etc.
• Brand Assets
• Reference Documents
• Official UofL Logos

Create Your Own Print Designs

To design your own pieces, you can use any of the three options:

1. Use a UofL branded template: louisville.edu/brand/toolkit/templates
2. Adobe Creative Suite - UofL is an Adobe Creative Campus, so this robust software suite is available for free.
   • Find out how to download the software for free 
   • Access Adobe tutorials
3. Canva - If you don’t have any design experience, are in a pinch, and need  a quick professional-looking design piece , consider using Canva. Create a free Canva account. Please note: Branding guidelines still apply and must be adhered to.

Find the Right Photos and Illustrations

Finding just the right photo for your piece can be a time-consuming endeavor.  It’s important that your photos and illustrations are print-ready resolution with high production value.  It’s easy to grab any photo from the internet, but you’re not legally allowed to use it unless you have the rights. Since most departments don’t have a budget for paid photography, we recommend several good sources of free-to-use photography. If you make a selection from any of these external sources, make sure to check that it carries a Creative Commons license that doesn’t require creator attribution.

UofL specific: 

• UofL on Flickr
• UofL Public WebDam

General stock photos:

• Pexels
• Pixabay
• Unsplash
• Wikimedia Commons

Get Your Project Printed

UofL Print & Mail Services offers paid printing services for brochures, flyers, posters, signage, etc. To order a print, first create an account here.

Get Design Assistance

A member of the A&S Communication Team would be happy to help advise you. We can recommend solutions to suit your needs, and depending on time, we may be able to produce small projects for you, like flyers and brochures, at our discretion.

Submit a graphic design request