How to use
The When Something Happens toolkit has everything you need to quickly communicate with your voters before, during, and after an emergency.
What is in this toolkit?
The toolkit provides nonpartisan messaging templates, including customizable graphics and captions for social media.
Browse our library of curated messaging covering a wide range of topics. They come in multiple formats, sizes, and languages (English, Spanish).
Graphics that can be customized in Canva
- Ready-to-use graphics in PNG format
- All graphics can be edited in Canva
Social media post captions
Calm and clear language that comes paired with the graphics.
Issue-based topics
Need to learn the best way to respond to a certain type of incident?
All topics have:
- Guidelines for creating content
- What to prepare ahead of time
- Additional resource links
- Non-social media messaging ideas
- Social media templates
How to use the messaging templates
You can choose to download and use images as is, or customize them in Canva.
To customize the messaging
- Change website URLs to your jurisdiction or state
- Add your county name, website, and seal
- Edit the highlighted text in bracketed [ALL CAPS].
- When making your edits, use sentence case.
Don’t forget that you will need to customize links and jurisdiction names in the Spanish translations and alt text as well!
You may want to match your branding
- Change colors
- Make sure that the text is readable. In most cases, use dark colored text on a light colored background.
Some social media platforms may have restrictive character counts
Our toolkit messaging will be perfect for most major social media sites, but some have lower character counts.
If the message exceeds the character limit on the platform you are using, you may need to split it into multiple posts or make edits. Some sites will allow you to easily group posts together into a single thread.
Unfamiliar with using Canva?
Start here with the How to Use Canva: A Beginner’s Guide.
Make the images accessible with alt text!
What is alt text?
Alt text makes digital images accessible, so assistive technology like screen readers can describe them to users. Alt text will display if images are unable to load on the user’s device.
How do I start using it?
All the graphics in our media library have alt text ready for you to customize.
When it’s time to post to social media, there are options to add alt text to your images. You just need to copy and paste, then fill in the blanks!
Use these tips for writing or customizing your own:
- Include text from the image so that the meaning is not lost. You can format the text into sentences to make it easier to understand. It does not have to be exactly the same. If the text from the image is already in the post caption, then it does not need to be included in the alt text.
- Keep it as short as possible without losing meaning. Sharing the messaging is more important than describing the visuals.
- Only describe visuals that are relevant to the messaging. No need to get into the details like colors or other visual flourishes unless important. For example, include an illustration of a light that is red, but don’t describe a textured blue background.
- Don’t say, “image of” or “graphic of” because screen readers will already start with that. Do include details like if it is an illustration, painting, or logo.
For more information on writing alt text, check Harvard University Digital Accessibility Services: Write helpful Alt Text to describe images.
Conditions of use
This toolkit is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International License. You are free to share and adapt for non-commercial purposes.
If you share the toolkit, cite the Center for Civic Design as the source. You do not need to credit us for every use of an image.
If you have questions about applying this work, contact director@civicdesign.org.