Student Minds Turl Street, Oxford, OX1 3DH

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1 Who are we? Student Minds is a national charity working to encourage peer support for student mental health. We encourage students to have the confidence to talk and to listen. We aim to bring people together to share strategies for managing mental health and to talk openly in a safe and pro-recovery environment. We provide passionate students with training, support and supervision to encourage and enable them to run peer support groups at their Universities. Early intervention for mental health problems is fundamental it stops problems becoming a crisis and allows students to develop confidence in their own ability to manage their mental health. Unfortunately early intervention is not always easy; students can be reluctant to ask for help and, when resources are limited, supporting students with milder problems can be a challenge. We believe that enabling students to support each other provides an answer. When students experience mental health problems, they are most likely to turn first to their peers for support. By building on this tendency, we help encourage students to start talking and to start taking positive action. We believe that it s okay to talk, and more importantly, that talking changes lives. Our groups encourage students to have the confidence to talk about any problems they might have. We operate in a safe, pro-recovery environment with the desire to inspire and motivate students, sharing strategies for managing mental health. Recovery should be an active and positive process, and Student Minds are here to help, with informal and non-judgemental groups. Through constant work with young people who have recovered from eating disorders, our work is really relevant! The charity itself was even formed by Nicola, who struggled with an eating disorder in her teenage years. Why does branding matter? This document is here to help you present the Student Minds brand in a way that allows us to get our message across as clearly and consistently as possible. By making sure that our publicity materials follow these guidelines, we can ensure that Student Minds is an easily recognised organisation in universities all over the country. A strong identity allows us to clearly and effectively communicate who we are and what we do as an organisation. This guide aims to help you present your

2 own ideas and campaigns in a way that allows you freedom whilst making sure that our brand is cohesive across all of our materials and communicates our passion for what we do at Student Minds. Contents Ready-made templates... 3 Word documents... 3 PowerPoint... 3 Using our logo... 3 Our main logo... 3 Positioning... 4 Student Minds Colours... 4 Typography... 5 How to make things stand out!... 5 Terminology... 6 Introducing Student Minds... 6 Key concepts:... 6 What can Student Minds offer to group attendees?... 7 Facts and figures... 7 Triggers... 7 Words we like at Student Minds... 8 Thanks... 8

3 Ready-made templates These templates have been made so that all the fiddly bits are already formatted with the correct colours, fonts and information. They also include headers which contain our contact information and a footer which includes our signature which shows our registered charity details and trustees. Both of these are really important as the header enables people to contact us and the footer credits the lovely people who pay for all the work we do! You can simply visit the internal Student Minds webpages, download the template you need and start writing! Word documents The word document template includes the header with our logo, address and contact details and the footer which includes our signature. You can download headed paper from the internal section of the website (under publicity and branding). PowerPoint This template is ready for you to use if you need to create a PowerPoint for Student Minds. It contains set designs, colours and fonts and makes sure that all our presentations will look the same. If you re planning on making a PowerPoint, download the template from the internal section of the website and everything will be ready for you to start! If you want to add more slides, click the arrow under the new slide button. Choose the first option in the custom designs section for title pages. The second option in the default designs section should be used for slides with more content. Using our logo Our logo is the easiest way for people to recognise our charity. To have as much impact as possible, we need to be using it in the same way across all of our materials. Here are some handy tips to help you to use it correctly. Our main logo This is our main logo which we use on our website, our banner and in the majority of our publicity materials. We have saved the logo in several different colours so that you can select the best colour of logo for your needs. These can be access on the internal pages of the website.

4 Once you have decided which colour is best to use, you can of course make these logos smaller or larger depending on your needs. Ensure the aspect ratio of the image is maintained so there is no distortion (see below for examples of how not to use it). Positioning Please make sure that you position our logo in a way that they can easily be noticed and read. Locating them in one of the corners or the middle of the document in an area where they are not crowded by lots of texts or images usually works well. Here are some good and bad examples of using our logos. Squashed! Too wide! Not aligned! Always ensure that there is plenty of space around the logo when using it on publicity materials, equivalent to the size of the m at the relevant size on all sides. This enables it to stand out properly. Student Minds Colours Red RGB: 165/48/56 CMYK: 0/71/66/35 #A53038 Dark Brown RGB: 56/45/36 CMYK: 0/20/36/78 #382D24 Blue: RGB: 57/74/89 CMYK: 36/17/0/65 #3A4A59 Orange RGB: 253/111/32 CMYK: 0/56/87/0 #FD6F20 Light Brown RGB: 189/113/45 CMYK: 0/40/76/26 #FD6F20 Cream RGB: 258/232/141 CMYK: 0/9/45/0 #FFE88D

5 Dark Green RGB: 35/89/55 CMYK: 61/0/38/65 # Light Green RGB: 102/188/41 CMYK: 46/0/78/26 #66BC29 We make sure that our Student Minds materials are easy to recognise by using a set palette of colours across all of our materials. We use dark tones, such as the red, dark brown, blue and dark green. For lighter tones, we use the orange, light brown, cream and light green. Our main Student Minds colours are the red, orange, light brown and dark brown so please stick to using these colours. By using these four core colours it makes our publicity materials instantly recognisable as part of our Student Minds brand. The other colours are there for you to use only if you really need additional colours to add variety. As you can see from this document, we use the red for titles and the orange for headings. In PowerPoint, we use the speech bubble part of the logo for title slides and orange font for slides with more content. To make it nice and easy to use the right colours all the time, simply download our ready-made templates which we mentioned earlier in the document. Typography Nevis is our main font, which you can see in our logo. Unfortunately, Nevis is not a pre-installed Office font, but can be easily downloaded for free here: Simply click download and then open the file and right click to select Install. You can then find the font among the font selections in Microsoft Word. If you have trouble installing the font you may need to download a free programme (easily found on Cnet.com) to unlock the zip file before you can install it. How to make things stand out! We like to use Nevis for all of our headings as it makes material look inviting. This is how we use it: Main titles: Nevis, orange, size 20 Heading: Nevis, orange, in size 14 For the body of text we use Calibri (body) in black, size 11 (unless we really have to make it smaller) as it s so easy to read. Have a look at the titles and headings in this document for an example of how to do this.

6 Terminology When running meetings or creating documents for Student Minds it is important to explain what we do and what we can offer very carefully Introducing Student Minds We d like to make sure that everyone reading about Student Minds finds the same information so that they know exactly who we are and what we do as a charity. For a good example of how to do this, take a look at the first paragraph of this document. Key concepts: We believe talking changes lives. We believe in empowering students to break down stigma and build understanding. Our support groups provide a vital safety-net ensuring that students have easy access to support. SRSH is a user-led organisation as our group attendees set the agenda by talking about the issues that really matter to them. We involve our volunteers in all major decisions and our board of trustees includes young people who have personal experience with mental health problems. We believe in giving students the chance to make themselves heard and we always work to incorporate our volunteers thoughts and opinions in our national campaigns. Using the position statement also includes lots of great phrases and is a good way of showing what we value: It is okay to talk. More than okay; it is talking that changes lives. We encourage students to have the confidence to talk and to listen, To find inspiration and motivation in each other s stories. We bring people together to share strategies for managing mental health, To talk honestly, in a safe and pro-recovery environment. If you are ready to start thinking about recovery, We facilitate informal and non-judgmental groups, To give you the opportunity to listen to and share experiences, To support you to explore what positive mental health means for you and how you get there. Because we believe that working towards positive mental health is an active process, it is a process in which you have to say, This is something I want and value. Together we have the passion and motivation to talk honestly and listen openly. Together we will change lives.

7 What can Student Minds offer to group attendees? This is very important; we have to ensure that anyone attending the group sessions understands what we can offer, so that they can decide whether or not the group is right for them at their current stage. Student Minds can offer a space for talking and reflecting, a place for participants to start thinking about whether they re ready for recovery and what recovery means to them. In these sessions, one of our goals is to motivate participants to stay on track with their recovery, by creating a pro-recovery environment. We like to promote a positive message that recovery is possible and with time, can happen. Student Minds can t offer our group attendees treatment, advice, or a cure. We understand eating disorders and we know that there is no formula for recovery; it can be a difficult, lengthy process and is different for every individual. Our volunteers are not trained counsellors. They are there to offer support, understanding and empathy, within the group environment and will therefore not offer support outside of the group. Our groups are not an alternative to or replacement for formal treatment. We are a stepping stone into treatment. We hope we can provide additional support for those in treatment and individuals further along the way in their own recovery. Professional treatment is valuable and often necessary, so please be careful not dissuade participants from seeking formal treatment. Facts and figures These can be a powerful tool when trying to talk about an issue but can have both a positive and negative effect on sufferers. Facts and figures we do use are prevalence rates, as we want people to understand that eating disorders affect many people and are an issue we need to address. For instance: Mental health affects an estimated 450 million people worldwide, yet many still feel ashamed to seek diagnosis and support. In the UK alone, 1.6 million people experience eating disorders. Facts and figures we avoid include data such as mortality rates as we feel that these can be detrimental to those dealing with an eating disorder. Rather than trying to quantify the behaviours of eating disorders, we prefer to alert people to the issue by talking about the impact eating disorders have on everyday life. We avoid talking about their behaviour and its physical effects but focus on thoughts, feelings and experiences. For instance, sufferers experience isolation and anxiety. Triggers Please avoid these at all costs, as they can have a very detrimental effect on those recovering, or considering recovering from an eating disorder. This includes: numbers (i.e. calories and weight), details of self-harm, specifics details regarding eating disorder behaviour, the length or severity of a sufferer s stay in hospital / formal treatment, images of people with a low body weight and links to websites that cite articles and web pages which may contain these triggers.

8 We find it is best not to dramatise issues surrounding eating disorders; the facts of a story are often powerful enough without needing to describe it in a way that makes the situation sound critical. Words we like at Student Minds Positive. Supportive. Recovery. Confident. Empowered. Safe. Understanding. Included. Listen. Talking. Thanks Thank you for taking time to read this document. It might be long, but it s really important that you stick to the guidelines to make sure that we are able to create the best atmosphere possible. We look forward to hearing about the campaigns, groups and fundraising that you may go on to do in the future!