[okfn-discuss] new brand, new website: coming up next week

Fri Apr 11 18:25:47 UTC 2014

All,

As many of you know, we're refreshing our brand, and as part of this we will
be refreshing okfn.org with our new brand next week.

   - We're improving things to help Open Knowledge reach more people -
   particularly communities who aren't involved in the open movement today
   - Name change: from 'Open Knowledge Foundation' to 'Open Knowledge'
   - New logo and better support for network use of the logo
   - Words change: we have a new way of talking about ourselves, to make
   sure new people to Open can understand what we're doing and why

The network has been involved in the brand development process especially
in the early stages as we explored what open knowledge meant to us all, and
over the last weeks we've been sharing the final results with local group
and working group coordinators.  We've also got a wiki page with all the
information: http://wiki.okfn.org/About_the_Open_Knowledge_brand which
we'll update as more materials etc become available, and as we work out
what are the "FAQs" we need to answer. So news of the rebrand is already
getting out, although we won't be formally announcing anything until the
website is live.

We've known from the start that no brand narrative or visuals will please
all of the network, which is very diverse. Some people probably will not
like the new logo, especially if they are familiar with the old one, and it
may take time to get used to it; however, the overall brand refresh is
designed to help us reach new people with the message of open knowledge,
which will make even more positive change in the world - and that is really
important. We've worked over several months with experts to develop a brand
which conveys the powerful message of open knowledge and which will help us
open up more information, and see it used and useful. This will enable us
to build on the success of the first ten years of open knowledge and to do
even more amazing things in our second decade.

We're already getting some lovely feedback from community leaders, such as:

*"I really like it!  :)   While my own approach to Open Knowledge is less
data-centric than most, this logo leaves itself open (as it were) to enough
interpretation to remain a great exemplar of Open Knowledge in all
its forms...**I know I'll be proud to use it."  -- *from Heath Rezabek, our
Ambassador in Texas. Thanks Heath :)

The main okfn.org website will update next week (this has been a
priority because
this site hasn't done a great job of explaining open knowledge for some
time, and gets a lot of criticism), and we'll gradually update other things
(email sigs, business cards, letterhead etc) in the coming weeks. We are
also very aware of community use of the brand, and will of course allow
community use of the logo just as we have done with the old logo, but we
hope that by providing stronger templates and tools we can all benefit from
greater consistency in our brand than in the past.  We will be creating
templates and assets and sharing these with the network as soon as we can,
so we can benefit from a shared strong brand that says who we are and what
we do, and helps us create more impact through open knowledge.

Do let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

We're excited about the new brand and how it will help us open up more
information, and we look forward to discussing how local groups, working
groups and projects around open knowledge want to use these communication
tools to support their activities too :)

Best regards,

Laura
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