Have Staffers Create Style Guides for Recurring Video Series

I’ve had a few different types of video series catch on with students. All of these videos do not fall under your traditional journalistic video format with interviews and b-roll — and I’m ok with that. From my standpoint, the videos they make have to fit the following criteria though:

  • They need to be non-fiction videos
  • They need to have storytelling aspects
  • They need to be relevant for the target audience
  • They need to be something the creator is interested in and will have fun making

That leaves things pretty wide open for students to make content they are interested in this day and age when there are limitless types of videos they could make, such as those found on the houston video production companies.

One of those categories that has caught on with a few of my intro students and staffers are Do It Yourself (DIY) videos. One of my students this year was doing a really nice job with hers, so I encouraged her to make a style guide for others on staff, or in the intro classes, to follow.

Style Guides are not just for newspapers and yearbooks to keep visual consistency throughout publications, video series and programs should have their own style guides giving guidance for everything from color pallets and fonts to spacing and placement.

I’d encourage you to have your staffers do the same, whether it’s the daily announcement show they are producing or traditional journalism stories they are publishing. Having content on your channel and site all with a similar look and feel should help the content be more visually appealing to the viewer and it will help bring more continuity to your channel and content.

If you’d like, you can view Allison’s style guide she created here as a starting point to create your own and I’ve embedded one of her videos above in this post.

Aaron Manfull

Aaron is in his 26th year of advising student media. He is currently the Director of Student Media at Francis Howell North High School in St. Charles, Missouri. He is the Journalism Education Association Digital Media Chair and co-Director of Media Now. He is the 2023 JEA Teacher Inspiration Award Winner and is a former Dow Jones News Fund National Journalism Teacher of the Year. He is one of the authors of the textbook "Student Journalism and Media Literacy." You can find him on X and Instagram @manfull. He's a proud father. A transplanted Iowan. And an avid Hawkeye Fan.

Aaron Manfull has 864 posts and counting. See all posts by Aaron Manfull

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