I was in the middle of writing a blog post about Code4Lib going regional
when it hit me -- here we have this incredibly successful brand and yet we
lack a t-shirt. But I guess we lack a t-shirt because we lack a logo to put
on it. The closest we get are the items that decorate our web site. Are we
at the point where we're ready to establish an official graphic identity,
that can grace our web site, journal, conference, etc.? I think so.

So here's my proposal: we take some of the money that has been passed down
from conference to conference and we hire a graphic designer to do a
professional job of it. Branding is best not left to amateurs. We put
together a committee of volunteers to handle it.

I know of at least one design firm that I think would do a good job, since
they just designed a t-shirt for OCLC that we really liked, and they were
delighted to work with library coders. See
<http://www.sanchezcircuit.com/catalog/>. There are no doubt others as well.

One of the nice things about a logo is that although it establishes a solid
graphic identity, it doesn't really take any organizational infrastructure
to do it, which seems to fit right in with the c4l vibe. So am I crazy?
Stupid? Or right? You decide.
Roy