This story was researched and written in collaboration with Creative Commons staff. You can also read the story onMedium．
On February 14, 2015 New York’s Museum of Modern Artwelcomedthe public to anew exhibit，“这是为了每个人:为公共利益设计实验。”“这是为了每个人”的灵感来自万维网的发明者蒂姆·伯纳斯-李的一条简短的推文，包括一系列迷人的物品、概念、设计和艺术品，它们被设想以有时意想不到或偶然的方式为全球公众服务。在整个展览中，观众会发现充满好奇和无处不在的物品和技术，这些物品和技术体现了个人创造力的增强。在白色的墙壁上，与国际通用的开/关按钮、回收和@符号旁边，你会发现一个同样重要的标志:“圆圈中的双c”，或者简单地说，“CC”，创作共用标志。卡塔尔vs葡萄牙分析
Creative Commons logo and installation view of “This Is for Everyone: Design Experiments for the Common Good”byJim.Henderson
Copyright and related rights waived viaCC0
This most visible icon of the free culture movement is on view in the exhibit, but the MoMA took even further steps to recognize the impact and importance of the “CC” logo and its accompanying ShareAlike, NonCommercial, Attribution, and NoDerivatives icons. On March 4, 2015 MoMA Senior Curator Paolo Antonelliannounced创作共用标志已经正卡塔尔vs葡萄牙分析式成为博物馆永久收藏的一部分。这既是一种象征性的收获，也是一种非常实际的收获。作为收藏的一部分，这些图标及其历史将受到MoMA永久的保护和认可。但他们的工作还远远没有完成:就像现代艺术博物馆收藏的许多其他一眼就能认出来的图标一样，“CC”标志将继续被数百万人在数百万种情况下使用和欣赏，而且在未来的许多年里。
The logos have had an incredible influence on the Internet and global society, and far-reaching, future impacts are coalescing every day. The world knows a lot more about Creative Commons in 2015 than it did almost 14 years ago when the organization was founded, but few know how the logos came to be, who created them, and what informed their creation.
创作共用卡塔尔vs葡萄牙分析标志是一种特殊而有力的符号，它说明了创造它们的组织的起源和根源。卡塔尔vs葡萄牙分析知识共享是由法学教授Lawrence Lessig、Hal Abelson和Eric Eldred于2001年创立的，旨在解决美国和世界各地过时的版权法所带来的问题。在一个通过互联网分享作品变得越来越容易的时代，版权法似乎正朝着另一个方向发展，增加了期限限制和对重用的限制。在这种紧张关系中，艺术家、研究人员和其他创作者如何在不侵犯彼此版权的情况下在网上广泛和自由地分享他们的作品?当时，除了雇佣他们自己的律师来编写自定义版权条款外，创作者没有办法授予重用的全面权限。卡塔尔vs葡萄牙分析为了应对这一挑战，知识共享组织提出了革命性的、人类和机器可读的版权许可，任何人都可以自由使用。但是，有了这些强大的新许可证，人们如何能够明显地表明他们对重用的偏好呢?
A designer and a roomful of lawyers get to work
Glenn Otis Brown joined as the second Executive Director of Creative Commons in 2002, taking over for Molly Shaffer Van Houweling to oversee the launch of the CC license suite. Along with Van Houweling, the organization’s founders, early staff and Board collaborators Neeru Paharia and Ben Adida, Brown played a key role in developing the first versions of the human- and machine-readable licenses, and would ultimately be presented with the challenge of building the visual identity system for Creative Commons.
2002年，格伦在离开SXSW的飞机上偶然遇到了设计师/动画师(他以前的同学)Ryan Junell，这导致了一个平面设计和品牌项目，最终带来了创作共用标志。卡塔尔vs葡萄牙分析上世纪90年代中期，瑞恩和格伦在德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校(University of Texas at Austin)是同班同学，他们旁听了有关互联网早期和乐观时代的讲座，并对网络将如何改变共享和版权的观点有了更深入的了解。
当格伦和瑞安在2001年重新联系时，格伦对知识共享有一个大的愿景，并有一个惊人的设计问题需要解决。卡塔尔vs葡萄牙分析CC许可的进展正在顺利进行中。一个法律团队和包括Molly和Glenn在内的早期工作人员，在斯坦福大学的互联网与社会中心(由Lawrence Lessig于2001年创立)努力制作这些新的、免费可重复使用的许可证，目的是让知识产权法领域的法律专业人士，以及拥有最少法律经验或知识的日常创造者和用户都能理解。
That early team already understood the importance of visual systems that could be used to convey simple but important information to the user, particularly to enhance the planned roll-out of a simple, web-based license chooser system. Color coding of yellow and green was used to express the level of openness for each specific license, with a strong urging for creators to go green and make their work as open as possible to maximize their contribution to the commons. But the question kept coming up — how do we visualize these powerful, new licenses? How could the license deeds be complemented with some kind of visualization or mark? What could be conveyed through those symbols? In the words of Larry Lessig, the Creative Commons identity “needed to be distinctive, yet teach through its design.”
Molly, Glenn and the team knew they needed a strong mark to further convey what each unique license meant, as well as a grander identity to tie them altogether. An identity not unlike the prevailing symbol of copyright in the world, the unmistakable and seemingly indomitable ©. Ryan Junell, who had been working at a series of design leadership roles with startups and design firms in the San Francisco Bay Area, accepted the unusual and exciting offer to create the public face of Creative Commons.
Two very busy weeks
The original project didn’t come with a traditional and detaileddesign brief．Ryan投入到这个过程中，直接与法律人员合作，以了解许可证及其含义。对瑞安来说，这些执照学得很快，他在90年代末接触过年轻互联网的变革思想，之前还在硅谷做过品牌推广和身份识别项目。在早期的网络时代，他就已经深谙共享和版权的复杂问题，懂得用清晰而简单的方式传达许可的精神和细节的重要性。他也很高兴能再次在充满挑战的、快节奏的学术环境中工作。
Ryan和CC团队花了两周时间研究和学习新的视觉系统，这对于任何一个设计项目来说都是一个雄心勃勃的时间表，更不用说对一个具有如此强大和广泛影响的项目了。他们天生就知道视觉效果必须简单有效。他们知道他们需要一个图标系统，并且这个系统必须在打印页面上和在网页、视频检索或标识上一样有效。它应该可以用键盘唤起符号[例如(CC)]，或者很容易徒手画和再现。卡塔尔vs葡萄牙分析知识共享的重点是全球影响，所以这个系统也必须跨越国界和文化。它还需要大胆而直接，不要过于复杂或复杂。
Creative Commons logo development, 2002. courtesy Ryan Junell
“If you create a question, you create
a reason for people to try to listen.”
Ryan worked through dozens of prototypes, studying the prevalent icons and systems at work at the time, and experimenting with riffs on typography, geometry, and unique letterforms. He shared iterations of early concepts, but the team was immediately drawn to the simple and clear form of the double-c letterforms in a circle. That concept came to Ryan early in the process, and it was idea that felt natural appropriate. He knew it echoed the classic copyright symbol, but it also felt simple, direct, and because of its deviation from the copyright symbol, more welcoming. As Larry later stated, “the multiple meanings of (c) doubled was important. If you create a question, you create a reason for people to try to listen.”
The early concept went through two brisk rounds of improvements but there were minimal changes or diversions from that simple original idea.
With the final “CC” concept clear, it was only a few more steps to build out the rest of the system. Other relevant symbols – the stroked dollar sign, circle-arrow, and originally the letterforms “BY” were suspended in the same bold circle and used to indicate the variants of the licenses: NonCommercial, ShareAlike, and Attribution. As a layered system, these icons were meant to reflect a spectrum of permissions, and would grow to present themselves in their most recognizable, rectangular button forms, set against grey, white, and black.
Akzidenz-Grotesk, a modern marvel
It was a masterstroke of design simplicity, and a brilliant way to portray the sharing intent of the licenses. A playful but confident relationship with the traditional copyright logo gave the “CC” logo an instant recognizability, but also a truly unique identity.
Junell set the original “CC” and the subsequent, lowercase Creative Commons wordmark inAkzidenz-Grotesk, an elegant and bold typeface created in the 19th century by Günter Gerhard Lange. It is considered the first true sans-serif typeface, and became a precursor to hundreds, possibly thousands, of subsequent sans-serif typeface through the 20th century. Popular amongst design-thinking tech companies of the time, it also evokes a spirit of simple, clear, public-minded and modern typography. The typeface is instantly recognizable as a mainstay of environmental and way-finding graphics. It is the progenitor of its more recognizable sibling,Helvetica(created in the late 1950’s), and to this day it is still the official typeface of the International Red Cross and its global chapters.
Animating the logo
The Creative Commons team had the identity in place, but they also knew they wanted a more animated, multi-media approach to make a bigger splash. It was early days of internet video (and low bandwidths for average users) but Junell had experience as an animator and was able to develop an idea for a Flash-based video, the first of several videos Creative Commons would release to tell the story of Creative Commons, and to convince new users to take advantage of the new licenses and icons.
“Get Creative是这个项目的第一个视频，它的特色是一个案例研究，灵感来自于现实世界中关于白色条纹的创造性重用情况。由格伦·奥蒂斯·布朗撰写，由朱内尔执导和动画，视频为艺术家、作家、学者和研究人员的新的和充满活力的扩展努力奠定了基础，并继续到今天。Junell和其他人通常认为这个视频是定义视觉故事的关键部分，就像商标本身一样。In the spirit of the video, digitalcomic storiesalso appeared, illustrated by Junell, and written and designed by Neeru Paharia.
From“Spectrum of Rights”by Neeru Paharia, Matt Haughey, and Ryan Junell /CC BY
The initial reception to the release of the licenses and the new logos was incredibly positive. The story brought a breath of fresh air to the technology media, much of which was still reeling from the gloomy, post-bubble narrative. Early adopters of the CC licenses, including MIT, the Internet Archive, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, sung the project’s praises and embraced the logos for their own CC licensed content. On t-shirts, stickers, pins and signs the logo grew and spread, quickly becoming one (if not ‘the’) prominent brand of the free culture movement. Evangelists, artists, coders and writers in the know proudly showed their support for CC by stickering their laptops, notebooks, and mobile phones. More zealous fans chiseled ordyed the logointo their hair during tech conferences, and more than a fewCC tattoos找到了他们最忠实的支持者。这个标志很快就成为了今天国际上公认的标志。
The back of this man’s head has a Creative Commons licenseby George Kelly /CC BY-NC-ND
The logos grow and adapt
The Creative Commons logos found themselves in an increasingly vast and complex Internet by 2005. The system was still simple enough to work in a wide variety of settings, and new platforms like Flickr and eventually Wikipedia and others would be able to incorporate the licenses and the logos in effective and visible ways. But as the logos became more popular and more global, it was evident that the original concepts would need to be updated. The use of the dollar symbol and the reliance on the ‘BY’ text were the two most prominent challenges. Both were conventional for western, English-speaking audiences but were impractical for use internationally.
Alex Roberts, 2005年开始与知识共享合作，担任其高级设计师卡塔尔vs葡萄牙分析，负责更新和扩展标识，并查看各种新的用例和场景的敏感工作。他在属性图标中引入了简单的简笔画来替代“BY”，创建了新的CC Zero图标，并创建了两个新的货币图标和欧元和日元符号，以显示非商业性标识的变化和国际化。
Additions to the logo family, by Alex Roberts
Roberts also produced the now-standard slim, rectangularlicense buttonsthat are in use on millions of websites today, and worked to improve the readability, layout, and clarity of individuallicense deeds．Roberts与Ryan Junell共同被MoMA认可为整体设计系统的创造和改进的合作者。
The new logos appeared in an updated Creative Commonsexplainer videoin 2006. “Wanna Work Together?” was again animated by Ryan Junell, and by then Creative Director Eric Steuer.
如今，Ryan Junell是一名在纽约地区工作的创意制作人。CC的第一任执行董事Molly Shaffer Van Houweling，现任CC董事会成员，加州大学伯克利分校法学教授。Glenn Otis Brown从2002年到2005年担任Creative Comm卡塔尔vs葡萄牙分析ons的执行董事，现在是纽约市Twitter的高管。Alex Roberts从2005年到2011年担任Creative C卡塔尔vs葡萄牙分析ommons的高级设计师，现在是Eventbrite的软件工程师。
The CC logos today and beyond
Since 2006 the Creative Commons logos have gone through no significant changes, and the CC 4.0 licenses and their representative logos are poised to continue their march towards ever greater visibility and prominence on the web. Their state as acquired by MoMA earlier this month is likely how they will remain for decades or centuries to come, an indicator of the simple elegance and effectiveness of the visuals and the lasting importance of the power of sharing.
In 2014 Creative Commons’ State of the Commons report counted the number of CC works at well over 882 million (with some estimates suggesting that number is well over 1 billion), coming from more than 10 million sites on the web. The majority of those works are available under one of the three most free licenses, ensuring their maximum benefit to the commons. Wikipedia and its sister projects provide virtually all of their media and knowledge under one form or another of the CC licenses, in addition to public domain. Flickr hosts hundreds of millions of CC images and videos alone, and Creative Commons videos and media thrive on Vimeo, YouTube, the Internet Archive and other major media platforms. Millions of students around the world are learning through freely reusable, Creative Commons licensed textbooks, curricula, and other teaching tools.
Creative Commons looks forward to shepherding the logos through the coming decades and centuries as they continue to grow in impact and use. The Internet and the world around it changes more every single day, and we look forward to envisioning how these symbols and the knowledge and media they accompany will continue to flourish and impact the world in yet unknown ways.
Celebrating the CC logo with a specially designed t-shirt
Today we are also excited toannouncethe availability of an awesome new Creative Commons t-shirt. Thanks to our talented friends at the Noun Project and Teespring, we are inviting fans and supporters to purchase this limited edition t-shirt that proudly celebrates the CC logo. You can read more about the campaign at this blog post, or head over to Teespring toclaim your shirt right now-这次活动为期2015年3月24日至4月7日。
Thank you for sharing this story of how an inspiring vision came to be represented in such a recognizable way. The logo, and the concept, produce a visceral and intellectual response that is immediately understood and appreciated. Kudos to Ryan and the CC team!
I really like the CC Logo