Visual material: Logos, Banners, Headers, Videos etc

Workspaces OpenCare
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6

Still missing logos with transparent backgrounds

Hi Everyone!

@Luciascopelliti @Lakomaa @MassimoMercuri @melancon!

I know everyone is super busy but can I ask you to please post the correct logos for your organisations in the wiki above? It will make life a lot easier for all comms work if all relevant materials are gathered in one place.

Lucia: the logo for City of Milano has a white background which does not work for all communication materials- we need two versions of the logo with a transparent background (1) suitable for dark backgrounds (2) Suitable for bright backgrounds

Erik: Same as above, we have three versons but they have white and back backgrounds respectively in the logo itself- we need a png with transparent background so we can put logos on different coloured materials .

Guy: Same thing again :slight_smile:

Instructions for how to do this:

  1. make sure you are logged in on Edgeryders

  2. Press “Edit” above to make changes to this wiki

  3. In the editor look for the “Image” icon and upload the file on the serves, then right click and press the file’s URL in the Image Properties window. This will insert your file.

  4. To modify file dimension or text formatting click “Switch to plain text editor” below the editor and insert the parameters you want in the code.

  5. Click Save.

Thank you!

7

update visual identity of Opencare

Hi Nadia,

We’re preparing a presentation in italian to introduce Opencare in communities in Milan together with Comune di Milano. It would be great to have an updated logo to add to keynote and communication as, we discussed, the one we have now it was taken from an open source repository and used by many other projects.

Are you working on it or would you like we do a couple of proposals so we can proceed with setting up shared a visual identity?

thanks!

Zoe

8

We are going to do an OpenCompetition

This is a good way to kick off online engagement so I am asking you guys to hold off on any official design. The plan is to launch it on February 1 (still a lot of other comms related work/planning to sort out before). Use what you like for the event but that will not be the official visuals.

9

Link to modifiable design files

@Nadia can you re-share the link to the google drive with project visuals/ avatars/ event logos etc? thanks!

Also, the Open Care Outreach google drive is gone missing?

10

They are in the same place for me?

In any case the Outreach and Engagement folder for OpenCare is available here.

The modifiable files are available here.

The headers I produced using a software as service online called canva.com which is great for producing all kinds of flyers, headers banners etc quickly, you can get the opencare headers here (if you get an account I can share modifiable versions with you).

11

Template for deliverables

Hi,

I put to your disposal a template for further reports / deliverables we will have to submit to the EC here (Opencare Admin folder).

This template is shaped from the 1st documentation we submitted today to the EC.

But we can still all go on and contribute for better graphics/visual arrangements.

12

Regarding typeface/font

@Nadia @Noemi

WHat is the correct typeface to use to write Opencare?

it is not clear in the information I read above.

Is it Montserrat OR Helvetica Bold?

You mention and use both above. I think we should stick with one typeface.

best

Zoe

13

How do we write OpenCare?

It’s not clear to me how the decision to use 3 instead of “e” came into being and what were the reasons.

In the Consortium call there was not a clear idea about it.

In any case: for searchable (google search) reasons and uniformity of communication we should stick with ONE way of writing OpenCare regarding spaces, capital letters, numbers and fonts.

it is not clear in the information I read above how we should do.

My opinion is:

  •  we should not use two different versions for research and for community header, it confuses people. (Open Care and Op3n Care)
  • the use of numbers instead of letters is not so common outside geek culture. I would not use Op3n Care or Op3nCare or Op3ncare because we want to reach a lot of people who live outside of geek culture.  it's ok to have the twitter handle but using it on the front page is pretty strong.
  • If there are not clear legal reasons I would use OpenCare 
  • All partners should have clear on how to deal with this, otherwise we lose consistency 

For sure we should do our best to avoid inconsistencies:

  • Op3nCare or Op3n Care  or OP3N CARE or OP3NCARE? You used all versions (with and without space) in the latest graphic banners we can see above and it gets confusing.

thanks for feedback!

@Nadia @melancon @LuceChiodelliUB @Alberto @Costantino

Zoe

14

Op3nCare

there are many companies etc that are called opencare and different variations of that, it’s already trademarkerd in some contexts/countries (Luce was kind enough to check it out a while back). We ran with op3ncare after and have done so for some time now because it is not taken by anyone else. Video is using op3ncare and twitter account has been @op3ncare from get go because @opencare was also taken.

Re visuals: The philosophy we have been employing is that people can adapt the visuals as they like, remix etc. Reasoning: it is not realistic to demand that people stick to any one thing. Post what works for you above and people will adopt what they like. Or not.

15

Consortium vs People

I answer on the second part of your text because I want to check with @Luce tomorrow about some details the legal issues.

Regarding visuals: One thing is what we do as a Consortium and a totally another level is what people will do with the visuals as they are released in open source. You are mixing the two levels.

The partners of the Consortium should be consistent in visual communication to be recognised as such.

All the other participants should be provided with clear information of what is our visual style in order to decide if to follow it or not to follow it.

If I know the rules I can decide how to break them and explain also why, if there are no rules it all becomes noise.

16

Moment for someone to step up?

@zoescope, I understood from the consortium meeting that the team in Bordeaux can make some recommendations and then the rest of us sign off to them, did I get it right? If not, maybe you guys in Milano can make a proposal if you have a vision for how visual design should be implemented? The proposal I’m seeing here (Nadia can correct me) is for us to use these as a base and if people like them, use them, if not, change or adjust.

If there is a counterproposal on the table chances are people are happy to change behaviors - e.g. create a guide to visual design similar to our guide to building online community?

17

Coming soon

As agreed during the last hangout meeting, we (UBx) had a meeting with WeMake (Zoe) to discuss around these issues and come up with recommendations. I plan to publish this here as soon as I have everything written down (travelling to Quebec, I am writing from the airport now).

In two words: we need to stick to a single spelling and we recommend OpenCare (no 3, no blank space, proper capital O and C), visuals, video channel, and autonomous landing page. Survival guide for easier use and compliance with these recommendations.

More to come.

18

Yes, except…

Ok, so partners will have an answer and reference point when it comes to which name to use, typefaces etc or when in doubt.

As for compliance, keep in mind that a lot of work has been done already in light of name considerations . For example with online accounts: opencare on twitter is taken, but in comms we do use opencare hashtag; on facebook the same - page is still OpenCare). So this should make it easy to be more consistent without undo-ing great work.

PS On Youtube OpenCare is also taken https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCM3UsvL6RMbT_NAn0tz2YIA.

19

So what changed?

As I recall, op3ncare was adopted because there are several companies called OpenCare, and the brand is trademarked in some countries. Also, the Twitter account was taken.

I propose:

  • We keep OpenCare in the official EU stuff – this is what's in the grant agreement.
  • We keep Op3ncare in public-facing communication
  • We use redirects to make sure  both variant URLs point to the same address: for example opencare.cc points to the same place as op3ncare.cc.

In all cases, we are unwilling to redo the graphic work already done (video etc.).

20

Hey guys, gimme a break

Hey guys, I told you I would come back soon,

I just landed in Montreal enjoying a chat with my daughter, I promised I would prepare something soon, like tomorrow?

:slight_smile:

1 Like
21

opencare communication recommendations

Following our hangout meeting of Thursday, April 28th [@melancon, @LuceChiodelliUB, @zoescope and @Costantino] and according to what was decided on that day, a discussion took place between a small group of partners to come up with a number of recommendations on our communication strategy.

Several aspects were taken into consideration:

  • A number of things were already done on the communication front (great video from LOTE5 rushes, community and research pages on the edgeryders.eu portal, etc).
  • The activities taking place under the hat of opencare are twofold, they carry an intrinsic duality, that has recently been identified and distinguished under the terms “community” and “research”.
  • Partners all wish to be visible and seen as participating to the opencare EU funded initiative; they also wish the EU initiative to be visible as well on its own.
  • The funded initiative relates more to the research component than to the community component although we must recognize  (and stimulate!) the necessary and profitable synergy acting within this twofold structure.

Our recommendations include:

  1. It is good practice, if not a necessity, to use a unique spelling for the project name.
  2. Although we are pushing for everything to take place online (in order to collect proper research material), we must not assume the crowd targeted by opencare to be as “digitally educated”. As a consequence, the use of digits should be avoided as it resonates as some geekness or weirdness to some. This has a number of consequences as discussed below.
  3. A series of channels have been identified (some new, some less new) and could be used in the following manner:
    • Keep using the @op3ncare twitter login account but associate it with the opencare name. An existing twitter account already uses the @opencare login; other accounts use names similar but distinct from opencare (OpenCARE, Open Care with a blank space). This would make the already existing @op3care twitter account compatible with the opencare name spelling.
    • This is already the case with the Facebook account pointing the op3ncare page (login) seen under the name opencare. We are not saying this Facebook account should only be used for research related stuff, we are suggesting it can comply with the above recommendations.
  4. Registration of these names has not been identified as urgent. When labelling our activity with the opencare label, the category (or class or activity type) rather than the name itself is as important. Because we adopt an open source strategy, we are protected against copyright infringement claims or ownership claims.  [Edit 02/05/2016 - By browsing the website for the European Union’s Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), it appears that the trademark OpenCare is already bought by a Japanese company for the product class we would be targeting (“consultancy, technological services and design”). The name OpenCARE is also registered by a German company, hence the corresponding twitter account.] 
  5. We therefore choose the name opencare, which is the simplest version available that also meets the recommendations we listed previously. 
  6. We maintain the use of the color and fonts that were adopted.  

    Blue and purple. We’ll need to make this as precise as possible for future use (RGB, HSL encoding).

    We should stick to the use of Monserrat fonts.

  7. We need to have a channel where all project videos are published and made accessible, although some videos may also be published on other channels (Vimeo for instance, as is the case for the video shot at LOTE5).
  8. We recommend creating a Google+ account associated with the opencare brand (https://business.google.com/create).

    • To start a Google+ page, we have to create a Gmail address first (opencare.h2020@gmail.com). This e-mail address shall not be shared / displayed nor used, - except for automatic replies, if the case presents itself.

    • This automatically creates an associated YouTube channel.

    • We may then follow the same @op3ncare / opencare login/name pairing as for twitter and Facebook.

  9. We need a landing page making the www.opencare.cc URL visible and distinct from the edgeryders.eu portal.
  • We keep this to a single page including:
  • Project name and “official” spelling, project logo (network + heart)
  • A one paragraph, elevator pitch, on the project
  • A clearly visible, attractive, clickable and catchy motto bringing people to one of edgeryders.eu landing page.
  • All EU and partners logos redirecting to each partner’s official website.
  • This page being distinct from edgeryders.eu makes it Drupal upgrade-proof.

Additional remarks:

  • The adoption of the above recommendations may have a number of consequences on work that has already been done. We need to decide who can take care of doing a series of things:
  • The Facebook profile picture needs to be adjusted (to opencare)
  • The LOTE5 video needs to be edited, so it shows opencare (and not Op3ncare) – keep it to a minimum (maybe only make sure the front image shows opencare instead of Op3nCare)
  • Anything else?
  • There does not seem to be any opencare (or OpenCare) GitHub account for now – just in case it would be useful to also have a GitHub account under the exact project name.

22

update

We’re working on a Design Survival Guide coherent with @LuceChiodelliUB remarks. (will be shared until the end of the week)

  1. Working on The Facebook, and g+ and twitter, profile picture
  2. we created some graphics for Milan's video (uploaded on the google drive)
  3. Github organization already created
  4. working on the landing page 
  5. we'll share also some other graphics material we're working on right now.

1 Like
23

Great - I can’t wait to see more

–

24

Can we test this?

I am not enthusiastic about having a landing page that links to another landing page. It seems more a political compromise than anything based on design principles.

Why don’t we do a real alternative landing page (linking to the relevant pages: how to participate, challenges etc.) and then test the performance of the two (or more) alternatives? I am not sure how that would work in practice. We normally do A/B testing with Google’s Content Experiments, but that assumes you are staying within the same “web property”. I think we could still do it like this:

  • Create an alternative landing page wherever you want.
  • Associate it to the existing Edgeryders web property and create the Google analytics tracking widget accordingly. 
  • Point opencare.cc and op3ncare.cc to one of the alternative landing pages. 
  • Choose a goal, for example the node creation page (https://edgeryders.eu/node/add/*)
  • Create an experiment, with all of the variants associated to it. 

Works?

25

About social media accounts

… this is more or less the same strategy that all EU projects have adopted since the Internet became a thing. The result has been a big digital junkyard of nearly-unused accounts on social media, hosting contracts that expire as soon as the funding does etc. Luce may have a point that it “looks good” when the project is live to the reviewers (depends on the reviewer I guess). Just staying in the fantastic world of CAPS (FP7, so projects that have at least 2 years of mileage already), check out the YouTube account of WebCOSI or the Twitter account of IA4SI (active project). There is even a CAPS project called SciCafe 2.0 that returns broken links.

This does not happen because the people behind those projects are stupid, but because running social media accounts, blogs, websites etc. is hard work. Doing it well on a project that will only live two years is wasteful.

On the other hand, if we did score a resounding success, we would start a spinoff producing care services.

But then again we would probably run into copyright/trademark issue if that spinoff were called OpenCare.

So.

Digital squatting is cheap – good idea to squat everything opencare.

On the other hand, our dedicated social media channels are hard to grow into useful tools. For now, we get much more mileage pushing OpenCare content on the Edgeryders Twitter account than on the OpenCare one. For now, we use the OpenCare one to put out a sort of “corporate” feed about the project, with most of the interaction done through Edgeryders or our personal Twitter accounts. Same thing for Facebook. I predict most of the social media traction will be exerted through the partners, rather than the project.

Twitter followers, Facebook page likes
  OpenCare Edgeryders WeMake
Facebook 134 2,915 4,420
Twitter 144 3,579 1,581

When you move beyond FB and Twitter, I do not think it’s worth putting any work at all in keeping OpenCare social media accounts. Our web analytics show that other social networks bring in a negligible amount of traffic. Uploading stuff onto project accounts should be viewed as an admin activity, not a communication activity, and therefore should be kept to a minimum. Low overhead is the way to go.

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