New Logo for Creating the Future – We Have a Winner!!

Wow!
After nearly a year of working to identify a look and feel that would evoke the core of Creating the Future, we have a new graphic design – a new logo. The first step in the foundation of our new website.

In the process, you helped us identify what that “look and feel” could make possible for Creating the Future and it’s mission.

A logo that best represents Creating the Future and “Change the Questions, Change the World!”

We trusted the process of engaging our community, and not surprisingly, it was an amazing learning experience. Mark Riffey, one of our board members, often says that if we’re being true to our values, “we need to eat our own dog food” ie: practice what we preach. The outcome is pretty cool.

Using the criteria you identified as the basis for what we were looking for, we received nearly 80 crowd sourced designs. Those were eventually narrowed down to 4 and over the last week, those 4 have been pondered and commented on by so many of you.

What were the results?
We’ve done quick tally and the logo up above (the circle with the hands releasing glowing question mark) was picked by at least 2 to 1 over the other 3 combined, with comments like:

 Absolutely #1. If changing the questions is what it’s all about, this is the one. Love it.

Clean, clear, vibrant, uplifting? I like way they incorporated a unique design of the question mark. Yup. Love it.

Something inside jumped a little when I saw it. (A good jump!)

So clean, clear, strong and reaching/aiming for what is possible. I can change the world with my own two hands.

It is clean and straightforward, very like the spirit of the organization and after awhile, the image could stand by itself and say Creating the Future.

The circle spoke to me as the world. I liked how clean it was. And the question mark with the lines often associated with lightbulbs going off in one’s head resonated with the purpose.

Other designs and considerations
The other designs also had good comments and things to learn from those responses, but they were far less and very few of those did not also include this design as the second choice. Those comments included the ideas of collaboration, people around a table, connectedness and  reaching toward the future.

This process also moved our thinking in considering what a logo could be.

Several folks reminded us that the logo had to work in many settings from the tiny favicon you see in your browser tab to avatars in social media sites, to websites and even t-shirts. Although we still need to look more carefully at fonts and colors (we’re not locked into the specifics of the layout we’ll settle on) the iconography of this design can easily address all those areas.

Other folks asked about just using text as the logo. I had thought of that as well and found myself pondering on that approach.  But soon after, in response to that question, Hildy added a comment to the last post that really speaks to that and the “Change the World” part of our mission.

I also hugely appreciate the thinking around using the words themselves vs the image. Being the writer, my heart tends to go there as well.

Except that, as an organization seeking to reach a global audience, if we rely on just text, we are telling everyone in the non-English-speaking world that our work doesn’t include them.

I’m not sure how one addresses that, and it wasn’t in my mind when we first embarked on this quest, but comments that have focused on the text have brought up that issue for me, and so I’m grateful that you guys have added one more big question for us to consider: How does our messaging translate in the non-English-speaking world?

What’s next?
The next step in the process of look and feel is the discussion around the strategy for our website, so be on the lookout for the announcement of live discussions around that issue. If you have an interest in how Creating the Future can further it’s mission through it’s web design strategy please join us.

Finally
On a personal note, selecting a new icon for Creating the future is an amazing milestone for me as well. Both in how this was done (Creating the Future walking it’s talk), and the fact that it was not me creating the logo. To date, I have been the resident, hardware/software/web and graphic design departments (with some bottle washing thrown in for good measure). Beginning to pass this baton to the community is an important step toward unleashing the potential of Creating the Future to achieve it mission.

Again, thank you for your thoughtful input and comments. You helped us to select an AWESOME logo design and as we all know, the world needs more awesome.

Also, if you’re wondering, Yes, that is the logo that came in after the last round of voting.