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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