From the CouchSurfing Wiki, an informal workspace which anyone can edit.

How to Submit Your Design

Follow this design brief. Upload your graphic to the wiki. Then add your graphic to the logo gallery. Finally, post to the Design & User Interface Team group to invite discussion on your design.

CouchSurfing Logo Design Brief

Guidelines
The new logo must visually captures the "spirit" of CouchSurfing, that is, our community values and mission as an organization.  It must also capture our core service, that is a community of surfers and hosts.

• Convey Our Mission
  The Leadership Team has been working on crafting a new mission statement, which will be released in several weeks.  However, the underlying concepts of the current mission will not change.  The current mission statement is:  "CouchSurfing seeks to internationally network people and places, create educational exchanges, raise collective consciousness, spread tolerance and facilitate cultural understanding."
  
  
• Convey Our Service
  Though we ultimately strive to make the world a better place, we are also a service.  We are an online network that connects travelers (surfers) with people who want to meet travelers (hosts).
  
  
• Be Welcoming
  Our logo may be the very first impression someone has of CouchSurfing.  We want them to feel welcomed into our community.
  
  
• Be Cross cultural
  Currently we have members over 210 countries, spanning 7 continents. We need a logo that represent this global diversity and not rely on imagery specific to one culture.
  
  
• Be Current but not trendy
  We need a logo that will last for the next 10 years.  It should not be trendy, modern, or slick.  We are not a dot-com.  But don't be too conservative or corporate.  We're not a bank either.
  
  

Key Concepts
These are some concepts to consider representing visually within the design:

• international / global
• social network / community / connections
• travel
  
• education
• adventure
• tolerance
• diversity
• trust
• family / friends
• equality
• inclusiveness / welcoming
• non-profit / charity / humanitarian
• contemporary / forward thinking
• empowering
  

Logotype or Icon
The logo may be a logotype, an icon, or combination of the too.  A logotype is the name of the business set in a unique typeface or arranged in a particular way. A good example would be the stylized type of the "Coca Cola" brand name.  An icon is a non-alpha-numeric symbol.  A good example is the Nike "swoosh".  If you use a symbol, you must include the text "CouchSurfing" or "CouchSurfing International" next to the symbol.  Note that we are not a dot-com, So don't use the name "CouchSurfing.com"


No Slogans or Tag-lines
CouchSurfing has used a number of slogan or tag-lines over the years including, "It's not about the furniture" and "Making the world better one couch at a time".  But we don't want to be locked into using these slogans whenever we use the logo.  Therefore, please do not include a tag-line in your logo design.


Required Format
The final design will need to be submitted as a vector format file (PNG, EPS, etc.) so that it can be blow up to large sizes.  The design must also be clear and recognizable even at very small size.  If you create your design in color, you must also include a version in black and white only (not grey-scale)