Core Principles for Guidance on Logo Use
The core principles that underpin the logo usage guidance in this affiliate branding manual are as follows:
- Co-branding — the lock up of any Harvard Medical School logo with an affiliated institution’s logo — is not permitted. HMS logos should not be equivalently adjacent to nor have the appearance of being combined or displayed adjacent to the affiliate institution’s logo. Only a few exceptions exist for truly joint institutes, including the Gene Lay Institute (at Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s, and Harvard Medical School) and the Osher Center for Integrative Health (at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School).
- Use of the Harvard Medical School name and/or logo in conjunction with a hospital system name and/or logo is not permitted. This is because while HMS has affiliation agreements with 15 hospitals and research institutions, it does not have affiliation agreements with any hospital systems. Therefore, HMS branding cannot be displayed in association with entities that are part of a hospital system but not affiliated with HMS.
- There are different logo versions and usage guidelines for HMS-affiliated institutions and for individuals who hold HMS academic appointments. The following page shows the HMS logo types (primary logo and affiliate/teaching hospital tag logos), and subsequent pages of this manual provide detailed guidelines and illustrations for permitted use.
- It is important to identify where an individual, lab, department, program, or other entity is physically based/situated. This supports Harvard’s standard of clear and accurate representation by transparently representing when an individual or entity is based at and/or employed by an affiliated hospital or research institution and not at HMS. This is particularly important in situations where we are continuing to permit the use of dual institutional shields, such as on fleeces.
- Use of the Harvard Medical School name in institutional boilerplates/About Us language must be consistent across its affiliated institutions. This language can state that the institution is a teaching hospital or affiliate of HMS. Beyond that, no other modifiers (i.e., first, oldest, longest, largest, best) may be included in descriptions that use the HMS name.
Additional questions may be directed to affiliateapprovals@hms.harvard.edu.