This is a repost of this topic from the Lounge a couple of days ago. I’m opening this up within the main forum as the number of people putting themselves forward for being part of the competition committee/team has been low (I have 1 so far ). This is OK, but I wanted to give everyone an opportunity to put themselves forward. If you are interested please ping back into this thread by end of play tomorrow. As time is a critical factor here, if we don’t get what we are looking for I’ll reach out to people within the community and form the team. The process will still be transparent and open, and the community will still get to select the winner.
Just to make the role of the committee clear, just so you know what you are letting yourselves in for the requirement is to:
Establish a design brief and communicate this with the forum
Establish rules and a process for the competition
Communicate with prospective designers
Market the competition, short list the entries
Provide a short list to the community and conduct a poll
Announce the winner !
I suggest the committee also needs to establish a timescale for each stage of the process because you mentioned there is some urgency.
I would certainly like to see this ready and able to bed down asap so we have it available when SAFEnetwork starts to get wider coverage. I’d also love to see this branding popping up in the various demos, tutorials, apps etc related to the project
I’d like to nominate @Al_Kafir seriously, and with only my good intentions. I shall be sitting this out and carrying on with other stuff, so for this to work we need people who care and are able to put in some effort here.
I’m in a quandry about the relevance of the Safenetwork as a marketing entity…marketing to whom?
Investors
App Devs
PR agencies
Safecoin is the prize that app developers will be striving for, safecoin is what folks will use to purchase resources with and apps are what will drive the adoption of the underlying Safenetwork. We have a great logo for that.
Brand dilution comes to mind.
A public facing Safenetwork brand…got an uneasy feeling about it myself. It’s a defined target for anything the status quo dislike about the shift it will usher in. I’d be inclined to let the apps take the glory and the guts being thrown around. You dont see the media blaming ‘the internet’ for anything, but a defined brand is inviting it.
To me, Safenetwork is for the nerds…no-one else really needs to know about it do they…I mean it’s the internet with better apps.
This feels somewhat pushed from behind the scenes…an investor perhaps?
It’s a way for us all to let users know we are talking about a “thing” that provides services, and this is something that Safecoin is a part of, not the basis of.
I think it makes sense to build a web App, a how to tutorial, a blog post about SAFEnetwork, and use a common logo. For apps it says the app is compatible with SAFEnetwork (“SAFE Inside” if you like ). For users looking for something it helps them identify content, apps etc that are about the services available on this secure, private, accessible network. It says Secure Access For Everyone.
Safecoin is not this. It’s a coin, it’s transactions, value, investment, commerce. It’s one subset of services. Its not communications, or storage, or the many other services that will be provided with the reassurance and values of the Secure Access For Everyone brand. I don’t see how it helps to try and convey this within a Safecoin brand.
So if we worry about brand dilution we should adjust to the SAFE brand and focus on that. We could drop “nerwork”, to be less nerdy, and drop “coin” to be less monetary. Then both would be covered by one brand, so this is worth considering I agree.
Good news. Investors certainly have influence and play a big role in how a business should be run and rightfully so. Mothers also influence their sons and daughters to put on their Sunday Best when going out into the public and parents urge the kids to not pick their nose and eat it in public.
So its for the same reasons that you @chrisfostertv picked a great moniker and a suitable photo for this forum that Maidsafe can leave nothing to chance and needs to pull out all the stops and create that everlasting image of confidence, durability and success so that the blood, sweat, anguish and tears from all involved are properly represented.
Branding serves to improve visibility and the flux of information, by introducing a recognizeable pattern to which different actors may relate. The use of branding may make it easier for users to create relations and dinstinctions. For instance: right now people often confuse Maidsafe with the SAFE network or they believe that the SAFE network will be somewhat run by Maidsafe.
The network stability increases with the ammount of participants, so I think there is a good reason to improve communication. Having said this, the fact that people on this board will decide about having a certain logo, does not mean that anyone else may come and propagate a different logo, for the network is not an enterprise.
Needless to say that any logo will remain forever, even those of enterprises. To me this is a good opportunity to creatively debate expectations and perception of the network.
I don´t understand your question. Do you want any sort of proof that branding does in fact improve communication? Like academic papers? Empirical data?
Also, I don´t get the notion of “metrics” in a context where both qualitative and quantative indicators matter.
That’s what I’m basically asking…Is it mainly for Dev conference type stuff where your selling the idea to app developers and after 10 years it’s just quietly become ‘the internet’.
As a branding for network development and exposure for potential investors in Maidsafe, it’s entirely cool
Nick, I must admit that design is not anything I’ve been involved with so perhaps I’m just out of my element here. To get an idea of what it is you’re looking for I looked up what a Brand ID is. It seems to be a lot more than just a new logo. Is it really a whole new Brand ID that you’re looking for or just a new logo? Or perhaps a new logo, color scheme and type face?
If you ARE looking for a whole new Brand ID then it seems like a big responsibility to hand off to a committee of volunteers, especially when time is a pressing factor as well. I can only see this become a success if the committee consists of people that have professional experience with such a process.
You mention a design brief for example. I wasn’t familiar with one, so I looked it up on wikipedia. Seems like a lot of work to make one, especially if you don’t have any experience making one of those.
Personally I really liked the design and logo’s used on the maidsafe.net website, but perhaps there is also a need to make a clear distinction between Maidsafe the company and the SAFE Network. In which case I can understand the need for a new Brand ID.
I would really like to help out since I am not tech savvy enough to do anything on that end, but I think I would be totally out of my element on this committee
Yes it is more than just a logo, the brand wheel mentions a lot of the things we would look to cover. I see the SAFE Network as a movement and I think it needs something beyond a logo, which typically is something put together with minimal thought. You are right that it is a lot of work to do this properly, but I would rather that we take the time now and do it in a transparent way where everyone feels part of the process.
As @Artiscience and others have said, I also believe it is very important to separate the network from the company. No probs on the committee thing,
). This is OK, but I wanted to give everyone an opportunity to put themselves forward. If you are interested please ping back into this thread by end of play tomorrow. As time is a critical factor here, if we don’t get what we are looking for I’ll reach out to people within the community and form the team. The process will still be transparent and open, and the community will still get to select the winner.
!