Logo ergo sum
notes on the evolution of our identity— aka, the june 2015 logo release party
Meedan the organization, much like our namesake Arabic word — ميدان , the ‘town square’ — has taken on new meaning in the past few years. Enough so that we decided to refresh our logo and brand presence.
To understand why we decided to make this effort, and what this new identity means for Meedan, I need to provide a bit of context.
Meedan began in 2006 as a registered non-profit and an unreservedly ambitious effort to cure the world of its ignorance by curing the internet of its aversion to moving content between languages and cultures. We were seed-funded by the Mulago Foundation. Shortly thereafter we secured a major award from the MacArthur Foundation and a three year research partnership with two IBM labs (Watson and Hursely). Quite suddenly our big ideas found themselves in the company of big partners. We identified as global citizens and thought that if we could network the web for social sharing and translation of media from Arabic- and English-speaking press we might impact the hysteria, ignorance, and suffering which we saw as an emerging post 9/11 legacy.
In these early days of our brand we needed a logo that reflected our geeky, global idealists values. With a strong bi-lingual wordmark and a boldly colored graphic pattern of overlapping dots, our logo served as a strong representation of inclusion, diversity, creativity, sharing, and dialogue. Its shape echoed the usually circular meedan of Arab city centers and as well the shape of the larger town square which is our planet Earth.
The much-loved Meedan logo continues to stand as the graphic symbol attached to a nearly ten year body of work, including, News.Meedan, WikiArabi, Nurani, C2C (Classroom to Classroom), Yallah Forum, Arab Citizen Media, Checkdesk, Tweet2Speak, and many others.
I think it is important to note that the Internet doesn’t forget; these projects all reference, and will continue to reference, this first generation Meedan logo.
Last year Meedan launched a for-profit, Meedan Labs, to carry out a large commercial contract. With the help of Rob Wexler from Adler Colvin we created a resource sharing agreement (RSA) that defined a relationship between Labs and Meedan.org and allowed us to share people, offices, ideas, and coffee mugs between these two companies. Much is made of the notion of the social entrepreneur, of the mission-driven business, the triple-bottom line. For us at Meedan the reality is much simpler, our bottom line is sustaining our ability to work together on the set of issues related to a translation and collaborative sense-making on the internet. Setting up Labs was just a sensible strategy for diversifying our sources of revenue.
The cost of this diversification, though, was a degree of practical and narrative complexity. And, in the early days of this new era there were some starts and stops (read, fails); maintaining two public brands for Labs and .org for a short period of time was a mistake. It was inefficient and confusing to team members, clients, and partners.
Our design response to this complexity was to simplify our public presence. And a new logo is the way to make clear to everyone that the Meedan ‘brand’ has evolved. So, to the point of this post, please meet our new logo.
The new logo is the work of our long-time friend and collaborator Michael Rylander. The fundamental, bold colors have carried through from the earlier logo. We are going global and so the logo moves beyond our English/Arabic binary, presenting — for now — just the English wordmark. The colors collaborate. ☺ When we look at the mark — beyond the stylized ‘M’ we might read the sign for ‘infinity’ — ∞ — or, a two signal symbols emanating from one point — an apt visual metaphor for translation.
Beyond the functional visual design requirements of a modern logo (“just make sure the brand moves seamlessly from favicon to six story HD billboard”) the mark of a good mark is its ability to proxy some of the meaning of a company or product to a first time observer.
At Meedan we have been reserving a bit of time to discuss what we mean; to workshop our brand. So, I will close this post with a bit of the brand vision our logo is meant to reflect. Far from springing from the lower paragraphs of this blog post, they have been discovered, debated, and documented through a process, facilitated by our Director of Product An Xiao Mina, that brought the entire team to the table. I am sharing across the organizational compass bearings we expect to assess our work and our brand against in the coming years.
Meedan is global, forward-thinking, creative and values-driven.
Global — International, Multicultural, Diverse, Cosmopolitan, Border Crossing, Transnational, Mulitilingual, Collaborative
Forward-Thinking — Progressive, Futuristic, Forward-Looking, Visionary, Of the Internet, Iterative
Creative — Innovative, Inspired, Dynamic, Connected, Quirky, Unconventional, Questioning, Colorful
Values-Driven — Open, Transparent, Compassionate, Humble, Inquisitive, Rigorous, Determined, Honest, Tolerant, User-centered
Thanks for reading and if some of what we are trying to create resonates with your personal brand, do give us a follow over on the Twitter @meedan or invite us for a coffee at hello@meedan.com
