Sam Smith.

International Open Data Day is an annual event to promote awareness and use of open data. Activities associated with the event include talks, seminars, demonstrations, and training. Open Data Day has a dedicated website, supported by Open Knowledge International (OKI). OKI is a global non-profit organisation, playing an instrumental role in demonstrating the value of open data, and in building tools to facilitate its use.

The energy and excitement that goes into, and is generated by Open Data Day, is testament to the vibrancy of the community, and the enthusiasm people have for these disparate events. The one centralised point in the Open Data Day landscape is the website, opendataday.org. When starting this project, the website did not reflect the energy or excitement of the events. It looked quite dry, and didn’t capture the enthusiastic participation. There was little to indicate the global nature of Open Data Day; text was available in three languages. If the site offered an identity, it was cold and technical.

In the community spirit of Open Data Day, the visual identity redesign started with a tool made at an Open Data Day event. Yuichi Yazaki made a logo generator, aimed at event organisers, enabling them to create logos for their local Open Data Day event. The logos produced beared no resemblance to the brand at the time, but in my opinion were an improvement. We ran with this, distilling the logo generator into a single, global logo. I then built upon this to create a fuller visual identity.

The key attributes I wanted to convey here were vibrancy, movement, and interplay. We felt these better represented the events. I achieved this with the use of bold, contrasting shapes and colours.

From a development point of view, the site was completely overhauled. A clear separation of content from code enabled much easier content editing. The workflow for translating and adding new languages was simplified, requiring a single file to be duplicated and translated. All while keeping the site hosted where it was, on GitHub. The current live version can be found at opendataday.org.

The redesign fostered ownership of the brand by the community, and it shows in how people use the resources to make their own events happen. For example, yearly translation of the website into at least 7 different languages spoken by the community; and the use of the design resources to brand the community events around the world."

Oscar Montiel, International Community Coordinator, Open Knowledge International.