1. GCE Applied ICT G040: Lesson 04 Media and House Styles
Mr C Johnston

2. Learning Outcome
Understand how graphics and other media can add impact to business communications
Understand what a house style is and components required to make one

3. Overview
Graphics and other media can be used to draw attention to certain parts of your text and illustrate your points pictorially,
White space is also important - use it to your advantage not ensure your work doesn’t loot cluttered,
Over use of graphics can be a disadvantage.

4. Drawing Readers Attention
A handy way of making paragraphs and headings stand out is to put them in a box. There are many types of border.
An alternative is to put a shaded background on your work.
Rules or lines can also be used to separate different areas of text or the page. It is common to put a “horizontal rule” between the body of a document and the headers and footers.

5. Drawings, Pictures and Clipart
Drawings and pictures often enhance a document or presentation,
A picture can be worth a thousand words,
Pictures can either be vector based or bitmap based:
Vector graphics are built up with lines and can be easily reshaped,
Bitmap graphics are made up of dots and loose their quality if you shrink / enlarge them.
Clipart is digital images which are supplied with applications such as word processors and DTP,
There is also a large number of images on the internet which can be downloaded,
Charts can be drawn using spreadsheet and other graphic software,
When using pictures they must be relevant.

6. Company Logos
A LOGO is a unique symbol or design that represents a company
Company logos form part a corporate image and colour scheme so documents are consistent
Examples of company logos can be found at:

7. Other Media
In online based communications you can take advantage of other media including:
Sound Effects
Add impact
Music
Backing tracks to set the mood
Animation
Flash, Frame by Frame, Slide show effects

8. House Style - Overview
A house style or corporate image is a set of rules that help to create a consistent look to business communications,
Often businesses will house style every document including envelopes, folders, brochures, business cards, advertising, websites, company vehicles and, of course, their products,
The basis of a house style are company colours but other components are present,
Most companies are recognised from there colour scheme or other stylistic features they use, long before you can read the company name on the material,
This identity makes the organisation easily recognisable and strengthens its reputation.

9. House Style - Definition
The main purpose of house styles is that they ensure a consistent, professional look in documents and publications
They provide guidance in a usable form for staff and reviewers
They provide a core set of guidelines that apply, for all audiences
They form the basis for the development of other guidelines, including those on writing style and templates for documents

10. House Style - Components
The main parts of a house style is colour scheme – which few colours are going to represent it
From this a logo is developed using these few colours,
Templates / letterhead will be included so that stationary conforms to the house style
Font style, size and colour will also be defined for a range of different uses e.g. headings, body text and lists
Rules regarding the use of bold, underline, italic will be defined
Rules regarding language use especially abbreviations may also be included
Creating styles in word processing and desktop publishing software help with text formatting

11. Activity
Download and complete this topics activity from the website