With new variations on our logos coming out (and start-up groups showcasing their creativity all the time), I remembered this email exchange where @tomis explained a bit about what the deal is with our branding guidelines and @spence suggested he put something together to share on the topic.
In case it takes Tomis a while to get around to writing such a thing with all his being-a-new-dad happenings, I’m just going to share a snippet of that email. He wrote:
“The brand guidelines were created by Eric Friedensohn [who designed and donated our logos, is mad talented on top of being so generous, and who is definitely worth following on social media]. You can see more about his process for this project here.
He gave us four colors as a starting point so we wouldn’t have to jump into picking coherent color pallets, but was clear that his design sensibilities (embedded into the guidelines) would not be disrupted by choosing different colors. You can see that the forty-ish icons he made for us a little later involve all kinds of colors.
So, the thing is that we, collectively as the ALC Network who use this logo/brand, have the right to change any part of it we want or disregard the guidelines — he’s given us this as a gift. That said, it’s my opinion that Eric is good at what he does and that the guidelines serve an important purpose…”
There. Shucks, Tomis. Couldn’t have said it better (or, frankly, that well in the first place).