[Design-team] Newly-expanded Fedora logo usage guidelines

[Máirín Duffy]

On Tue, 2011-07-19 at 21:52 +0000, Christoph Wickert wrote:
> I wonder if this process is described somewhere:
>       * How can one request a change of the guidelines?
>       * Who decides about a change and who is empowered to make it?
>       * Are changes double-checked with the trademark owner?

Fedora legal and Red Hat legal were consulted throughout the process. 

The logo is trademark of Red Hat, Inc. The current Fedora logo's design
was funded by Red Hat and was designed by a Red Hat employee (at the
time) Matt Munoz. He wrote the original guidelines to accompany them, as
is the norm in logo design situations. I designed all of the other logos
on that page, including the FUDcon logo, the four foundations logos, and
the Fedora application and groups sublogos, and Ian and I came up with
the guidelines to accompany those designs working together. We both have
a great deal of experience dealing with logo usage situation as we've
both been maintainers of the Fedora logo request queue. This means we
have a pretty good understanding in what situations the logo is used and
the types of logo requests Fedora as a project receives. We put that to
use in creating these guidelines.

If you think a change to the guidelines is necessary you can discuss it
here. Both Ian and I are subscribed to this list. 

Any kind of governance issues you'd like to bring up for these items,
especially the trademarked items, is not really appropriate to bring up
on this list. I would recommend that you contact Fedora legal and/or the
Fedora board on those issues as they are off-topic for the design team
list.

> > - Coverage of the Fedora application and group sublogos.
> 
> The sublogos are a good example. The logo usage guidelines describe a
> certain amount of clearing around the logo and the sublogos are an
> exception to that rule as they don't have sufficient clearing.

No. You're misunderstanding how logo design works. 

The sublogos have their own clearing guidelines. They are explicitly
approved variations on the main Fedora logo, as the guidelines state.
They are explicit exceptions to the main logo's clearspace rules. There
is no clearspace violation with these sublogos because they are special
exceptions that have been designed by the logo maintainers in response
to an identified community need.

>  Somebody
> could just violate the guidelines and declare it a sublogo.

No, they could not. You are not automatically granted a trademark
license to use the logos by reading this page and following the rules on
it, which the page states explicitly at least a couple of times. As
outlined in the guidelines, you are supposed to request permission for
your particular usage of the logo in writing to logo at fedoraproject.org.
If your proposed usage is approved, then you are granted permission to
create your logo. So sure, anybody could write logo at fedoraproject.org
and say they would like to create a Fedora group sublogo that is for a
new group they are forming called 'Fedora Hot Dog Haters.' However, if
they are not given approval via the logo queue to create such a logo,
and they go ahead and do so anyway, then they are doing it without
approval and really shouldn't be doing it.

For any more particulars on this, again I must defer to Fedora legal and
I request that you take up further discussion on this point with Fedora
legal and do not continue discussion of it here on design-team.

>  Do we have
> an authoritative list of all sublogos? How would one request a new one?

No. Do you need such a list?

As the page states pretty clearly in 18pt font, if you want to make use
of any logo designs on the page please send your request to
logo at fedoraproject.org.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
~m