University of Kentucky Brand Font Transition

UK Marketing and Brand Strategy

Apr 24, 2023

Beginning April 15, 2023, the University of Kentucky started phasing out the use of three specialty fonts that were previously introduced in the University’s brand standards in 2019. The newly selected fonts are similar, but available for use by UK employees via the university’s enterprise-wide license for Adobe products.

This transition applies to UK’s main campus; it does not apply to UK HealthCare or UK Athletics.

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University of Kentucky Brand Font Transition

Who Should Take Action

These fonts were primarily used for the development of marketing and communication materials such as brochures, web pages and presentations. To that end, those who should act are:

All campus marketing and communications staff
All campus employees who installed font files downloaded from the university brand standards site
All campus employees who installed the fonts provided to them by the UK Marketing and Brand Strategy team or a marketing or communications professional in their college or department
Employees using templates downloaded from the university brand standards website where the specialty fonts were installed

Replacement Fonts

The table below show the fonts that are being phased out, and their respective replacement font found in the Adobe Creative Suite

Old Font	New Font
Avenir	Usual
Trade Gothic	ATF Alternate Gothic
Surveyer	Bodoni PT Variable

Two brand fonts not impacted by this transition are Blackbike and Mercury, neither of which should be used in body copy or main text. Both of these fonts are available only to graphic designers upon request by emailing brand@uky.edu.

Instructional Links

How do I uninstall non-Adobe fonts?

How do I install Adobe fonts?

How do I deactivate Adobe fonts?

How to Install Adobe Creative Cloud for Windows?

How to Install Adobe Creative Cloud for macOS?

Where can I download UK branded templates?

Transition Timeline

April 2023: Transition begins.

Uninstall Avenir, Trade Gothic and Surveyor
Install Usual, ATF Alternate Gothic and Bodoni PT Variable
Download updated university-branded templates

May-August: Transition

Update all digital materials that are downloadable and available on the web without password protection
Example: A PowerPoint presentation or link to a presentation that is available to any website visitor and uses Avenir, Trade Gothic or Surveyor should be updated with the new fonts or a universal system font such as Arial or Georgia
All newly printed materials, signage, stationary, etc. must use the new fonts in accordance with UK’s brand standards
Any newly designed digital materials including videos must use the new fonts, or universal system fonts such as Arial or Georgia

September 30: Transition complete

This is the end of the font transition process.
Campus partners are expected to have made every effort to be in compliance with the font transition instructions by this date.

FAQs

Phasing out Avenir, Trade Gothic and Surveyor is necessary for a few reasons:

Rising costs:

The cost to license these fonts has increased substantially and it is no longer feasible to continue purchasing on behalf of the university. The current license expired, and we elected to phase out the use of those fonts. The new brand fonts — Usual, ATF Alternate Gothic and Bodoni PT Variable — are available via our Adobe license and therefore do not require additional licenses.

Changing Model:

Due to the high cost, we would only be able to purchase a limited number of licenses to distribute to campus on a request basis. Additionally, the pricing model changed. For instance, we previously could purchase Avenir as a font and use all the variations within the font family. The new pricing model would require us to purchase Avenir bold, Avenir italics, etc. separately.

Compliance:

We have a large campus that produces a lot of great content — print and digital. Because we produce so many assets for our university’s numerous communication channels, it has proven increasingly difficult and resource-intensive to manage the font licenses and ensure campuswide compliance with the licensing agreements. Moving to these Adobe-sourced fonts will relieve much of the liability that comes with paid font licenses.

Your website

If your website uses Avenir, Trade Gothic or Surveyor, please exchange it for a web version of the new fonts for web. Our web team can provide instruction on how to do that if needed. Contact them here.

Your printed materials

If you received Avenir, Trade Gothic or Surveyor print fonts from University Marketing under its license, you should stop using these fonts in new printed materials beginning April 1, 2023. They should be replaced with the new brand fonts.

If you are designing new printed materials you must use the new fonts.

If you have already-printed materials with Avenir, Trade Gothic or Surveyor (such as handouts, promotional items, or a banner), you may continue to use them until they run out or you naturally retire them. However, once you need to reprint those materials, you should replace those fonts with new brand fonts in your documents.

Your digital files

If you have used Avenir, Trade Gothic or Surveyor to create PDF documents, PowerPoint presentations, videos, or other digital files, please update them by September 30, 2023.

UK’s brand standards and templates, such as PowerPoint, have been updated, as have all stationery and business card templates. You may access those here https://www.uky.edu/prmarketing/branding-resources/brand-assets

UK’s ITS team did a great job putting together these helpful how-to primers.

How do I uninstall non-Adobe fonts?

How do I install Adobe fonts?

How do I deactivate Adobe fonts?

How to Install Adobe Creative Cloud for Windows?

How to Install Adobe Creative Cloud for macOS?

Where can I download UK branded templates?

For some Mac users, three versions of Avenir (Avenir, Avenir Next and Avenir Next Condensed) were pre-loaded to some systems as part of the MacOS operating system license. You will not need to deactivate those, and in fact, the system will not allow you to uninstall them. But not all systems came with that font and because of the cost concerns, we were not able to purchase enterprise-wide licenses.

No, but this is a wonderful opportunity to start using official brand fonts and branded templates.

How do I uninstall non-Adobe fonts?

How do I install Adobe fonts?

How do I deactivate Adobe fonts?

How to Install Adobe Creative Cloud for Windows?

How to Install Adobe Creative Cloud for macOS?

Where can I download UK branded templates?

While we highly recommend using official brand fonts for consistency and brand recognition, there are additional fonts that can be used for your website. University Adobe licenses as well as Open-source collections such as Google Fonts provide a wide range of fonts that are available to use and can be alternatives to the official brand fonts. However, please note that it is important to be mindful of licensing restrictions when using non-brand fonts from these libraries.

Phone	859-257-1754
Fax	859-257-2635
email	brand@uky.edu

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University of Kentucky Brand Font Transition

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Who Should Take Action

Replacement Fonts

Instructional Links

Transition Timeline

FAQs

Why is this font transition necessary?

What do I need to update?

How do I download and install the new fonts on my computer?

Looks like some Avenir fonts came with my computer. Do I need to uninstall them?

We don’t currently use Avenir, Trade Gothic or Surveyor. Do we need to change anything?

Are there other fonts the come pre-loaded on my computer that I can use for presentations, documents, and other everyday needs?

Can we use fonts other than the official brand fonts on our website?