World Wildlife Fund Photo and Video Guidelines

Create Effective Content and Adhere to the WWF Brand

Whatever type of video you’re producing, it should feel distinctively “WWF.” The brand should come through in the content, script, voiceover, and overall look and feel. WWF brand values include a combination of the following WWF attributes, as appropriate to your audience:

• Knowledgeable We base our policies, actions, and voice on science.
• Intelligent We have solid expertise.
• Optimistic We are a solutions-focused organization. We communicate our messages using positive achievements that demonstrate results and inspire others.
• Determined We are passionate about what we do and determined to make a difference. Without fearmongering, we show problems that urgently need to be tackled and solutions that we believe in.
• Engaging We communicate in ways that are relevant to our audiences and accessible to as many people as possible.
• Inspirational We inspire people to participate and take action.
  

General WWF Imagery Principles

Four principles to help maintain consistency in image quality and experience:

• All WWF field staff, government officials, partners, and guides should be treated with respect. Be aware of local customs and cultural sensitivities that impact your work and heed them to the best of your ability. WWF strives to consistently portray Indigenous people and local communities as accurately as possible.
• Minimize any impact on nature and the environment during the course of your assignment.
• Photography must accurately represent the subject matter and events being captured; manipulation of images is strongly discouraged. Adjustments made to an image for creative purposes must be disclosed.
• Captioning must be specific, accurate, and truthful, both explicitly and implicitly. For example, captive animals should not be represented as wild, whether by stated information or by omission.

Photo Specs

• Photographic images shall be delivered to WWF in accordance with these formats and minimum standards:
• Size and resolution printable to A4 or greater at 300 dpi (i.e., minimum 4800 pixels along the longest side)
• Hi Res JPGs with camera jpeg compression levels that are set to minimum with no further compression or resizing of original files
• Images to be delivered without any manipulation
• Camera color setting: Adobe RGB (not sRGB or converted from sRGB)

Captions and Metadata

WWF uses standard IPTC Headers to transfer captions and metadata into our system for future identification. The information below must be embedded in the IPTC Headers of each digital image (editable in “File Info” in Adobe Photoshop and the “Metadata” panel of Adobe Bridge).

Essential IPTC fields

• Creator: Photographer’s name. (Do not include photographer’s credit in the caption. WWF credits all images, but including credits in captions will be considered nondelivery of agreed product.)
• Date Created: Date the photo was taken (include for each picture).
• Description: Unique captions for each image describing who is depicted in the image, where the image was taken, and what is going on in the image. (For example, “A male lion in the Okavango Delta, Botswana” or “Charles and Jane Barfknecht, landowners in Muenster, Texas, pose with their cat Stinky in a pasture on their property.”)

A note on copying and pasting captions: While the copy-and-paste function can be useful for adding common information across a range of images, remember that individual captions must reflect—in some detail—the key objects, people, species, and/or actions unique to each individual image. WWF will consider generalized or incomplete captions to be nondelivery of agreed product (see “Deliverables” in your WWF contract).

If you use image management software (such as Photoshop, MediaPro, LightRoom, etc.) with field names that differ from the IPTC Header standard, equivalents for that particular program can be provided on request to ensure that everything transfers properly.

The WWF Logo and Copyright

Use the current logo Use the up-to-date versions found in the WWF-US Brand Guidelines. Contact us at [email protected] to receive the brand toolkits, which include fonts and logos.

Ensure clear space zone The minimum amount of space allowed around all four sides of our logo should be measured by the height or width of the capital “W” in our WWF initials. The same space is used as a minimum distance at which the logo should be placed from the edges of a document or screen.

Use of partner logos When creating endings for films produced in association with other organizations, set the WWF logo so that it is equal in height to the partner logo(s). When placing text or another logo near the WWF logo, make sure the specified amount of space is separating them. Place text or other logos apart from the WWF logo at a minimum distance that equals the height and width of the “W” in the “WWF” type from the panda logo.

Other logo scenarios If WWF paid a production company to produce a video, the company adds its credit line but not its company logo. If your video was coproduced or cofunded by a production company, then the placement and use of its logo must be negotiated.

End videos with the logo Our panda stencil video ID, which is used Network-wide, consists of a “tail” sequence that ends every video. The stencil is available for download from The HIVE. See example under “Outro.”

WWF logo placement within the video Think about including the WWF name or logo in shots when appropriate; for example, in the background there might be a WWF banner. WWF staff in the film might wear WWF t-shirts or caps. The name or logo must look natural in the video context. If possible, make sure the logo seen in the clip is the current WWF logo.

Include our copyright statement Content that is created solely by WWF must carry our copyright statement to protect WWF’s intellectual property. Put this copyright statement on the final shot with the logo (in the lower third of the frame), or below the credits:

© 2023 WWF. All rights reserved by World Wildlife Fund, Inc.

In addition, whenever the initials “WWF” or the WWF logo is used in a video, the following trademark and copyright statement must appear on the final shot with the logo (in the lower third of the frame), or below the credits:

WWF® and ©1986 Panda Symbol are owned by WWF. All rights reserved.

Typography

Our brand specifies the use of Open Sans in videos. It should be used for all text. Use various sizes and/or weights of the font to distinguish among headlines, subheads, captions, etc.

The size of the font is flexible but should fit the overall look and feel. Fonts should usually appear in white against the live action background. Depending on the background, other colors may need to be considered. Make sure subtitles are easy to read against the background; if they are not, insert a transparent overlay behind the text. Animated After Effects templates are available—contact [email protected].

Examples of text on screen follow.

Opening Title Slates

Contextual Slates

Solid Background Slates

Subtitles and Lower Thirds

End Slate/Credits

B-Roll Slates

B-roll is supplemental footage (video, still images, graphics, animation, etc.) inserted as cutaways to support the narrative of the video. The B-roll slate is an intro title page that lists the B-roll footage, its timecode within the clip, and the image credit.

Interview Package Slates

Interview packages should include an open title slate over black containing the following information:

• WWF logo at the top left of the screen
• location, date, and name of acquisition (for context)
• full name and title of person interviewed
• timecode (full length of interview in hours/minutes/seconds preferred, but can also be 00:00:00:00)
• a credit line at the bottom of the screen

Outro

The WWF-branded outro should appear at the end of the interview:

Format for Credits

Use a consistent format when listing the video, photo, and sound credits.

List each creator (who is usually also the copyright holder) on an individual line. If for space reasons you need to run the credits in a block, use semicolons to separate the individual credits. Do not put a period at the end of the block. Slash marks are closed up—no spaces on either side. Examples:

If WWF is the copyright owner:

© WWF-US/Videographer or Photographer name

If the creator is hired by WWF but retains copyright ownership:

© Videographer or Photographer name/WWF-US

If the image was taken by a WWF staff person while on WWF business, then WWF owns the rights:

© WWF-US/Staffer’s name

If the photo was taken by a WWF staff person during personal time:

© Staffer’s name

If the photo vendor includes a URL before or after a name, use a slash (no spaces) to separate the URLs from other copyright information:

© Florian Schulz/www.visionsofthewild.com

© naturepl.com/Tony Heald/WWF-Canon

Always credit images. To keep things simple, we credit all images—even when sourcing from vendors who don’t require us to do so on royalty-free stock images.

Music Credits

Format is Song Title/Composer – Source. Example:

And the Forest Came to Life/Jerome Leroy-ASCAP – Audio Network

Delivery of Assets

Deliverables Checklist

Check your contract to make sure you are delivering the requested assets. They may include but may not be limited to:

• raw 4K/5K video clips
• B-roll package of up to 20 minutes with a timecoded shot list
• interview packages
• Adobe Premiere Project file of the master(s)
• master sequence(s) in the following format: QuickTime H264 at 20 MBS minimum
• a web-ready file for YouTube (should also be a deliverable in your vendor contract)
• a textless version of the master sequence that can be used by the Network for non-English-language versions
• documentation of all model releases, licensing, credits, and copyright information

If delivering large files, consider loading media onto a drive that can be returned to you.