Announcing Changes to The Carpentries Logo Usage and Modification Policy

The new logo modification policy is the result of a cross-team working group that met in the second half of 2021

As The Carpentries grows and welcomes more and more members to our community, we are solidifying policies to ensure we are supporting our community equitably, while at the same time making sure The Carpentries’ logos, trademarks, and interests as an organisation are protected.

We want to ensure that our community has clear directions and resources when they are working with or modifying The Carpentries logo. Currently, the policy is not very clear and community members are left to parse it on their own which leads to variance and misunderstandings in the modifications.

To this end, members of The Carpentries Core Team* formed a working group in the second half of 2021 to recommend updated and clear policies around the usage and modification of The Carpentries logo.

The policy drafted by the working group has been approved by the Executive Team of The Carpentries and is now ready to be shared with our community for implementation.

By creating this new policy, we hope that a more streamlined and navigable process and structure for modification will encourage new sub-communities to blossom.

The Working Group

The working group proceeded with the following aims and anti-aims:

Aims of the Working Group

  • Clarifying Carpentries rules for modification of our logo
  • Creating clear workflows for how to modify our logo and seek logo approval
  • Ensuring the new set of policies are applied equitably to new and existing sub-communities within the larger Carpentries community

Anti-aims of the Working Group

  • Creating a system to punish community members for modifying our logos and trademarks without our permission
  • Preventing or stifling local sub-communities

Next Steps

Now that the policy is ready to share with our community, we anticipate there will be a settling-in period, during which the Community Development Team will actively work towards assisting local, regional, and domain-specific communities within The Carpentries to rework their logos to fit the policy.

If you are a member of a sub-community that has an existing modified logo that you are unsure of, or if you are interested in developing a logo for your sub-community and have questions, please email community@carpentries.org and we will work with you to create a logo that fits your needs while meeting the new specifications.

Community Discussions

We will also be hosting two community discussions where we plan to answer questions both about our plan moving forward and the reasoning behind these changes.

If you have any questions outside of these Community Discussions, please email community@carpentries.org

*Members of the Core Team that were in the trademark working group are as follows:

  • Alycia Crall
  • Danielle Sieh
  • Maneesha Sane
  • Omar Khan
  • Talisha Sutton-Kennedy
  • Toby Hodges

Dialogue & Discussion

Comments must follow our Code of Conduct.

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