It’s been several years since we designed our first logo. We were a new organization without an image to represent the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance. I had attended a nonprofit organization workshop and they had a presenter on hand who was helping folks with marketing.

I had a few rough design ideas on paper. The presenter worked with me on the logo design. I left the event with a round, global type logo with a feather inside. I was pretty happy with it and it remained our one and only logo. The IMFA received its nonprofit status in June 2016.

We have been using the logo on the IMFA website pretty much since our founding. For the most part, our website has been fairly static since we first went online. We have occasionally updated the site with new board members, but not much has changed in years. That’s because we put most of our focus on the IMFA’s digital news site, buffalsofire.com.

As we’ve grown, and matured a bit, we realized the old logo no longer reflected our goals and mission. Our logo looked like a globe, and our tagline read: Your Global Right to be Heard and Informed. While we believe everyone around the world does have the right to be seen, to be heard, we are directing our attention a little closer to home.

We’re also playing up to our updated our vision and mission statements, recently revised by the IMFA board of directors at last fall’s strategic planning retreat in Santa Fe, N.M.

Our vision: A world where democracy thrive for Indigenous people through an independent press.

Our Mission: The Alliance improves the civil liberties of Indigenous people through research, advocacy, and nation building by employing the core values of integrity, inclusivity and transparency.

At our core, we are working to help our communities thrive by listening to people and being responsive to what we’re hearing. We want to help our communities practice freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and have better access to freedom of information. It’s in our name, the Indigenous Media Freedom Alliance.

So, when we decided to hit reset on our IMFA logo, our directive to our designer was to evoke the feeling of freedom, of movement. Our secondary goal was to connect the image, somehow, to our Buffalo’s Fire logo. We’re confident our mission was accomplished. We hope you think so, too.

We fondly bid adieu to our old logo.