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YU Usage, Brand Campaign and Tagline

YU is defined as a proprietary entity in York’s Brand Stewardship Policy and procedures and therefore has a list of acceptable usage cases and required approvals from Communications & Public Affairs.  

Definition: YU – pronounced “Y – U” (not “YOU”) – is our most informal York term.  

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Usage  

  • Pan-university internal initiatives with broad reach (i.e. faculty, staff, students)  
  • Names of products/services (e.g. YU Screen, YU Card, YU Eats, YU Link)  
  • Names of internal-facing campaigns or initiatives (e.g. MeetYU, BecomingYU)  
  • In special previously approved cases, lowercase has been used for all text.  
  • YU should not be used for:  

*External facing products/services, campaigns or initiatives 

Order of yu in Naming  

  • YU should primarily be ordered at the beginning of products/services names/campaigns  
  • YU can be placed at the end of the product/ service/campaign name in cases where YU sounds odd or is grammatically incorrect when placed at the beginning  

Visual Representation of yu with Project/Initiative (Not Copy)  

  • After securing approval of YU usage of your project/service/initiative, a text treatment can be created with a space in IBM Plex Sans via York’s University Brand & Marketing team. In the case of a hashtag, there will be no space.  
  • There should not be a hyphen between the YU and the project or initiative  

Yu Merchandise Mark  

  • The approved YU merchandise mark does not appear on its own and must always have “York University” somewhere on the merchandise  

Yu In Written Copy Form  

  • Should be capitalized in writing/hashtags with a space and the first letter uppercase, the remainder of the word in lower case. The exception is in hashtags where this rule applies, with the exception of the space.  

Approvals 

  • Using YU in product/service/initiative name requires brand approval. Please contact University Brand & Marketing: cpabrandmar@yorku.ca. 

York University’s brand positioning comes to life with the creative expression – Right The Future – which has its own usage rules – see Brand Standards for Designers for more information. 

Additional Faculty, sub-brand, unit, campus, divisions and initiatives are not permitted to have  their own taglines. This includes any standalone statements that compete with the University logo  or tagline.