The meeting
In preparation for the tweetup on 19th May 2016, a meeting was held between White Label Dev and Pavilion at the Park to discuss ideas. WLD agreed to supply name badges and gift bags for the event and it was jointly agreed it would be a good idea to create some unified logo/branding for these things as well as the promotional leaflet being developed by JuliaVDesign. Cooluxart offered to produce some stickers and through a contact at the Maestro charity produce t-shirts and mugs. It was a fantastic opportunity to do something for the event and for BedsHour in general. WLD agreed to develop a concept for #BedsHour that could also be used by everybody involved in the tweetup and later adapted for #BedsHourEvents use too. A working group was set-up to co-ordinate the efforts.
The pivot
WLD funded the development of professional quality artwork which could be used by all the people in the working group for their various parts of the project. It was during this stage that some of the participants realised it was the first time that any number of people on BedsHour had come together to use the same unified branding across their areas of expertise, from web to print to video to merchandise. WLD concluded it would be a great opportunity to contribute something to BedsHour that would hopefully benefit everybody. The focus changed from developing just artwork for a tweetup to developing a set of easy-to-use tools for the entire community to make use of afterwards.
The requirements
WLD decided on the criteria quickly after the decision to change direction. The branding had to be completely free to use, for any reason, for business, charity and individual use, for non-commercial and commercial use, for positive and critical use, in fact for any reason anybody may ever want to use it for. It has to be free to change, alter, modify and create derivative works from. The branding had to work very well across a range of mediums, from very small engraving to large banner size printing. It had to work in single colour, in full colour, on black & white printers, on light and dark backgrounds, and work for a wide range of possible uses. The branding had to be very easy to use, modify and adapt. Most importantly it was decided that WLD would ensure that the work was fully gifted to the entire community by working to remove and relinquish any claim of ownership or copyright over it that WLD may hold or attempt to claim, now or in the future. This would offer peace of mind for people to use it without any future concerns.
The freedom
WLD contacted Clare at Stanmore IP to seek guidance on the best way to achieve gifting the work to the community. Clare was very helpful in explaining some options and suggesting some things that hadn’t been considered which ultimately guided us to the free and permissive licenses we chose for the works. Intellectual property management is very important for business and WLD are delighted that Clare from Stanmore IP has confirmed this logo to be free to use. If your business needs any support with intellectual property related matters please do contact her @stanmoreip and of course you will find her on #BedsHour.
The result
At the end of the process WLD completed development of the branding and are very pleased to give away here the key assets needed to make use of it. Since being used at the tweetup it has now already spread on to cars, public noticeboards, mugs, badges, t-shirts, leaflets, info-graphics, and Twitter avatars, and it’s only been a few days. To make it especially easy for you to adapt for your own purposes WLD has developed the brand in 2 components – the hashtag graphic and a font you can install on your computer (the font itself is called BedsHour). The graphic is a SVG/Scalable Vector Graphic format which is an open standard file format that can be used in most programs on Mac, Windows, Linux and more. The font is a TTF/True Type Font format which is a very widely supported format that can be used in most programs on Mac, Windows, Linux and more. WLD is expecting to provide OpenType and WOFF font formats in the future so the BedsHour font can also be used in web pages. When the font file is installed you can write any text in any size and it will look identical to the BedsHour branding. You can make it say whatever you want. When you open the vector image you can import it in to your project with the default text. If you have a vector-based image editing program and have installed the BedsHour font before opening the SVG, you can edit the default text right inside your image editing program.
See: How to Install, Remove, and Manage Fonts on Windows, Mac, and Linux
The future
Please do share examples and inspiration of your usage to encourage and assist others. WLD are very excited to see what ideas and uses the community comes up with and hopes that by contributing this work, it will act as a catalyst for future projects which benefit the whole BedsHour community.
The files
All the files you need are available right here.