Ubuntu Summit 2024: A logo takes flight

One of the first things we think about when we start planning each Ubuntu Summit is the logo. This might seem like a small thing, but it’s important. We want our logo to reflect the summit’s location, and to provide a sense of its cultural identity in an inclusive and welcoming way.

We enjoy design challenges like these, and the places they take us. But they’re difficult, and take time. How do you represent a location and a culture, with perhaps hundreds of years of history, in three or four colours at a size that will print on a t-shirt or beanie?

Design by geography

For our two previous summits, we used well known monuments from the cities hosting the events; Charles Bridge stretching over the Vltava river in Prague for 2022, and the Freedom Monument in Riga last year. We felt these worked well because they were easily identifiable, looked good at a small scale and represented community building, inclusivity and support.

Logo a go go

This year, however, proved a little more challenging. The Summit is being held October 25-27th in The Hague, a wonderful city on the edge of the North Sea in the Netherlands, not too far from Amsterdam.

The Hague has some magnificent buildings of its own, and we used this as inspiration for our first approach.

Our first design was of the tower at the Peace Palace, which is part of the International Court of Justice. This looked quite good, but was slightly too narrow, and at this scale, we didn’t think the tower was distinctive enough.

We then tried using the Ridderzall (Hall of Knights), which is part of the Binnenhof, and one of the oldest parliament buildings in the world. This was a closer fit to our previous designs, but there was also a lot of detail to try and simplify while still being distinctive enough.

Finally, we thought we’d try our most obvious idea: a depiction of one of the many windmills you find in The Netherlands. We liked this a lot, and this design was close to being chosen, but ultimately, we thought it was a little predictable and pedestrian. A little too safe. Instead, we wanted to try something bolder, and in all our research about The Hague, we kept seeing images of storks…

Soaring to new heights

Thanks to the surrounding wetland, storks are interwoven between the history and culture of The Hague.

Images of storks eating an eel have even become a symbol of luck and prosperity for the city. There’s one in the city’s coat of arms, for example, and this gave us a unique opportunity to create a logo in a way we’ve not tried before, based on some wildlife.

As soon as we saw this sketch, we all agreed it was both a refreshing change, and something very Ubuntu-like. It represented both the culture of the city and the culture of our community. 

This was the idea we wanted to take further, and it’s the idea we’ve ultimately been working on ever since. And now it’s finished.

After 7 different revisions, and some important tweaks to the eel (ask us for the bloopers, privately), we present our Ubuntu Summit logo design, 2024, for The Hague…

Join us at Ubuntu Summit 2024

To learn more about what makes the Ubuntu Summit so special and how to register to attend, please visit summit.ubuntu.com.