Sadly, my contract relating to alumni blogging has expired, so in theory this blog is redundant too. However, you don’t get rid of me that easily! I’m now working on the University’s new Public Engagement blog with David Sleight, Dean of Public Engagement. So far it has been an eye-opener for me; I just hadn’t realised how much public engagement goes on, and has been going on since we moved to Lincoln.

Actually one minor point has recently arisen which is possibly relevant to alumni blogs, especially relating to their value as instruments of marketing and recruitment. It’s about the colour you select for your links. The University has four corporate colours which are required as part of its Corporate Branding policy for print and web publications. Two of these, dark blue and grey are classed as “primary colours”, and two others, teal and magenta may be used as “accent colours” – for highlighting mainly.

If you accept the argument that you alumni blog has a marketing value, then it seems quite reasonable to me that we should stick to these colours as much as possible, even if one part of me baulks at restricting our choice on aesthetic grounds.

So, just to illustrate the point I have changed the link clour here to magenta – and I quite like it it, unlike the teal, which to me has a very cold feel to it.

To change your link colour, go to the theme options page on your dashboard and look for [link colour]. You will see a box with some code in it and a small patch of the current colour. Copy the code for either teal or magenta from this page: http://www.lincoln.ac.uk/home/abouttheuniversity/press/identity/colours/. It’s marked “Hex”, short for hexadecimal. So for instance, the code for this blog is now #CC3366. To activate the change, paste this code into the box and save the new setting.