Cover page of the CC Style Guide 2019. Photographer: Heather Hazzan; Wardrobe: Ronald Burton; Props: Campbell Pearson; Hair: Hide Suzuki; Makeup: Deanna Melluso at See Management. Shot on location at One Medical. CC BY

Crafting and maintaining a consistent style is essential to establishing and promoting an organization’s brand.  As with any organization, Creative Commons’ (CC) brand should help CC build trust with its stakeholders and the broader open movement, as well as maintain and grow CC’s reputation, legitimacy, and leadership in the Global Commons. With that in mind,…

The story of the Creative Commons (CC) logo is linked to the story of CC.  In 2002, just one year after the founding of CC, designer Ryan Junell accomplished the difficult task of designing a logo that is distinctive, yet teaches through its design. Over time, the CC logo has become a recognizable symbol of…

Image credit: "Teaching," Joris Louwes, CC BY-ND 2.0

As part of the drafting committee, Creative Commons (CC) fully supports the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER) on which the member states will vote at the 40th session of the UNESCO General Conference in November. We laud the multitude of national governments and open education experts engaged in the development of this international…

Design by Victoria Heath; Image by Sebastiaan ter Bur, CC BY

The 2020 Creative Commons (CC) Global Summit is returning to Lisbon, Portugal on 14-16 May! We’ve grown the CC Global Summit every year as hundreds of leading activists, advocates, librarians, educators, lawyers, technologists, and more have joined us for discussion, debate, workshops, planning, talks, and community building. Whether you’re new to the community or a…

Image by Sebastiaan ter Bur, CC BY

The 2020 Creative Commons (CC) Global Summit is returning to Lisbon, Portugal on 14-16 May, co-hosted by CC Portugal. You can help bring the CC Summit to life for our participants by volunteering for a role on one of our planning committees. Please note: These are remote positions; you do not need to be located…

At the 2017 Creative Commons Global Summit, we hosted a special session with filmmaker Robin McKenna that featured an early look at her then-in-progress documentary GIFT. McKenna’s film is now completed and opens today in select cities in the US. Inspired by The Gift, Lewis Hyde’s influential 1983 book about creativity and sharing (and an…

From CC Nepal: Photo by Roshan Kumar Karn, Director of Open Access Nepal, licensed CC BY 4.0

The Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN) is a passionate community that lights up our vibrant, collaborative, global commons. The CC Network is also critical to our mission of sharing. To support CC Network members, we launched a scholarship program for CC Certificate courses.  Today, we are proud to highlight our first 10 CC Certificate Scholarship…

Elizabeth Batte tweeted her Certificate graduating from the June 2019 class. She will join Jeanne Pavy, another June Certificate graduate, and present how they plan to use gained knowledge on campus, and the impact of CC licenses in higher education at the 2019 LOUIS User Conference on October 15.

From June—August 2019, Creative Commons hosted eight CC Certificate classes for Academic Librarians and Educators. Participants in the classes studied Creative Commons licenses, copyright, the public domain, and open practices. Certificate students developed open licensing proficiency and deepened their understanding of the broader context for open advocacy. See examples of the assignments participants shared under…

Image credit: UNESCO, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO

Today is the International Day for Universal Access to Information (IDUAI). You may be wondering why this day is necessary—particularly in 2019, when the average person is inundated with an estimated 34 gigabytes of information every day, from emails and text messages to Youtube videos and news programs. In fact, it’s easy to take information…

Earlier this year, we met Patrick Böhler, a journalist and executive editor of SWI swissinfo.ch, the international news service of Switzerland’s public broadcaster. In our conversation, we discussed the ways that various media companies and journalistic projects have used Creative Commons licensing to increase public access to their stories. We were excited when Patrick circled…