Logo Design for Nonprofit Institute on Public Diplomacy

MountainRunner Institute (MRi): MRi is devoted to the study of and conversations about America's public diplomacy policy.

The MountainRunner Institute (MRi) is in the process of establishing itself as a niche institution devoted to raising the volume on public conversations about how America conducts its discourse globally. Public diplomacy was once richly debated via Congressional hearings about international radio programming, cultural exchanges, and international humanitarian and economic aid. Those channels have atrophied today, and we are establishing MRi to fill that conversation gap. This is especially important in a time where public diplomacy and strategic communication legislation is sadly outdated in this modern information age environment.

MRi will have a robust web presence, eschewing traditional partisan "brick and mortar" think tanks to instead create a conversation outpost. From this outpost, we intend to engage with all Americans to raise their understanding of and get their opinions about their government's public diplomacy policy and strategy.

As a nonprofit startup, MRi requires a bold, recognizable logo that will underpin all of its interactions.

MRi's audience is all Americans, particularly those "outside the beltway" of Washington, DC. Too often, think tanks and policy institutes develop papers and products that only serve those who work in our country's Capitol. While MRi intends to implement a targeted Congressional and Executive Brance outreach strategy, we also need to bring into the conversation every other American who cares about how the U.S. engages globally.

The competitive landscape in Washington's nonprofit policy institute community is fierce, but MRi will serve a single niche: that of public diplomacy and strategic communication. To that end, we want our logo and brand to be unique and representative of the trust, knowledge, and change agencies we have promised to uphold for our constituents.

MRi's logo must be recognizable, bold, and unique. We encourage as much creativity as possible, with the understanding that this logo will be used for the professional purposes and business of the Institute (i.e., branded on presentations, business cards, website, etc).

We need multiple file types of the final logo: JPG, PDF, GIF, BMP, or any standard file used for print purposes. We need high resolution versions and low res versions.

Please visit the following websites to see logos and designs we admire or feel will be competitors in our brand space. Please use these as guides to determine how your final products should stand comparatively.

http://cnas.org
http://www.heritage.org/
http://www.cfr.org/
http://www.aspeninstitute.org/
http://www.rand.org/
http://www.potomacinstitute.org/
http://publicdiplomacy.foreignpolicyblogs.com/

For an idea of the type of content MRi intends to put out, and a clue to MRi's origins, please visit the blog it was based on: http://mountainrunner.us/

We have also attached a number of logo designs for a predecessor to MRi, the Global Engagement Network. GEN never got off the ground and NONE of these logo designs struck us as particularly good or effective. Image 2.D in the v2 logo PDF is the closest design to one we have liked, but it lacks a visual panache. We offer these images to you to help in your planning.