HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, pronounced haystack) is an international network of networks of humanists, artists, scientists, and engineers, of leading researchers and nonprofit research institutions dedicated to actively designing the future of learning through new forms of collaboration across communities and disciplines as fostered by creative uses of technology.

We are dedicated to the creative design of experimental research and learning technologies, critical thinking about the use and applications of technology, and participatory Web 2.0/3.0 forms of collaborative learning across disciplines. Diversity in all ways (race, gender, age, disciplines, etc.) is of critical importance to us. We try to make everything we do either opensource or available under Creative Commons licensing.

HASTAC pushes the envelope and frontiers of knowledge. We are definitely "outside the box," edgy, visionary, innovative, groundbreaking, cutting-edge, modern, even perhaps a bit renegade or rebellious. At the same time, we are highly respected and are taken seriously in the academic/tech community.

We encourage you to review our website for further information and to get a firm handle on our identity: http://www.hastac.org and http://www.hastac.org/needle.

Here is what we need:

We need a new logo design that will be used on all collateral materials and on our website (scheduled to be re-designed this fall and which will be leveraging the look and feel of the new logo). Our design needs to represent our unique and unconventional identity.

Our target audience is:

Our primary members are individuals interested in all forms of digital and computational media and arts, innovation and learning, as well as universities, supercomputing centers, humanities institutes, museums, libraries, and other civic institutions. Since 2003, we have been developing technologies for multimedia learning experiences and social interaction, including networking, gaming environments for teaching, innovative educational programs in information science and information studies, virtual museums, and other cutting-edge digital projects.

We actively engage undergraduate and graduate students (HASTAC Scholars) as full participants in designing the future of thinking and the logo should reflect the young, dynamic, and innovative face that they themselves represent and that they attract to the HASTAC site.

Our design must at once appeal to a wide variety of audiences, from the youth blogger/twitterati creating the next big thing in digital media to our steering committee members parent institutions.

We like these designs:

We like clean, modern, and innovative designs. Design should reflect networking, crossing of boundaries, energy, boldness, visionary, cutting-edge, excitement, innovation, creativity, and digitality that defines HASTAC. Logo can be a primarily textual treatment or include the development of some new iconic image.

Color palette and font choice is entirely open as we will be using the logo as the guiding force for our forthcoming website redesign.

Some examples of designs that we like include the vector logos at http://vectortuts.com/designing/30-brill...

Some ideas that we have brainstormed (but to which we are in NO way married) include:

the incorporation of a word-cloud-esque text treatment, highlighting key HASTAC concepts

the creation of a very abstract, iconic gesture to a literal haystack, but which would have to simultaneously overcome the tongue-in-cheek element of such an image to convey the HASTAC networked, digital identity (our information commons is called Needle and has a tongue-in-cheek needle in a haystack as its icon)

the incorporation of a phonetic pronunciation of haystack per a dictionary

the inclusion into the logo of some brief phrase or tagline that encapsulates HASTACs identity

WE ARE IN NO WAY INVESTED IN ANY OF THESE IDEAS, but offer them only to provide insight into some of the ways we are thinking about the logo. We want to encourage complete creative license, guided by an understanding of what HASTAC is all about!

Our design absolutely must have:

The logo must include BOTH the acronym HASTAC, as well as the longer title for which it stands: Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory. Proposals may include two logo designs, one with just the HASTAC acronym, but it MUST include one with both components as well.

The logo cannot be conventional, traditional, dated, non-digital, safe, boring, etc. Were not an organization in any conventional sense. We are a movement and our logo should inspire change not along any prescribed route, but in bold and visionary directions that havent been charted yet.