Canadian Atheist branding
Canadian Atheist is not a money-making venture; the goal of CA has never been profit. Canadian Atheist’s primary goal has always been and will continue to be to provide high-quality topical content for our readers. For that reason, most of our content is released under a very permissive licence
However, CA maintains certain copyrights to protect its branding and logo. There are two reasons we do this:
- To protect Canadian Atheist’s name and identity from being used by fraudsters and other dishonest agents. This is partially to protect CA’s reputation, but it is also important to protect people from being fooled by others trying to masquerade as Canadian Atheist.
- To allow us to sell branded items – shirts, mugs, etc. – to help offset the costs of running the site.
If you have questions about what the elements of CA’s brand are, or what you are allowed to do with our branding or logo, read on.
What are the elements of Canadian Atheist’s brand?
Canadian Atheist’s branding consists of:
- the names:
- Canadian Atheist
- Athée Canadien
- the names mentioned above, rendered in the Exo 2 font (see below for details of the font)
- the Canadian Atheist logo (see below for details); and
- combinations of the above.
The name
Canadian Atheist identifies itself with the name “Canadian Atheist” in the following languages:
- English (Canadian Atheist); and
- French (Athée Canadien)
More languages will be added in future as translations become available.
The names will always be rendered exactly as shown in the list above, subject to some reasonable exceptions. They will never be pluralized (so “Canadian Atheists” does not represent CA), and no alternative capitalization will be used (so “Canadian atheist” does not represent CA). Exceptions are allowed for design variations (for example, when all-capitals is being used, “CANADIAN ATHEIST” does represent CA), and for any adjustments required to make a sentence grammatically correct (for example, some languages require adjustments to words depending on the grammatical case the word is being used in – an English example would be the possessive case, where “Canadian Atheist’s” would represent CA).
Of course, Canadian Atheist cannot hold a copyright on the words “Canadian Atheist” (in any language). In fact, there are several other entities that use those words or close variations to identify themselves.
However, while the words themselves are not copyrighted, the words when rendered according to the font specifications described below (for example, as shown in the figure below) are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved.
The logo
The Canadian Atheist logo is a stylized capital letters “C” and “A” combined together, along with half of a stylized maple leaf similar to the one in the centre of the Canadian flag.
The “black” colour can be varied depending on the background colour. By default, the background is assumed to be “pure” white (or close to it). In that case, the black should be “pure” black in sRGB colour space when used in computing contexts (for example, “#000
” or “#000000
” in HTML/CSS notation). In contexts where that is impractical, the colour
“closest” to pure black should be used.
However, if the logo is being used on a dark background, the “black” colour should instead be “pure” white in the sRGB colour space when used in computing contexts (for example, “#fff
” or “#ffffff
” in HTML/CSS notation). In contexts where that is impractical, the colour
“closest” to pure white should be used.
The “red” colour should be “pure” red in the sRGB colour space when used in computing contexts (for example, “#f00
” or “#ff0000
” in HTML/CSS notation). In other contexts (high-quality printing, fabrics, etc.), the red should use the same specifications as the red in the Canadian flag.
Official images of the Canadian Atheist logo, in all variants, are available for download.
The Canadian Atheist logo is protected by copyright, with all rights reserved.
The font
The Exo 2 font was created by Lisbon-based type designer Nataneal Gama. It is available under the Open Font License. Under the requirements of that licence, a copy of the font is provided for downloading, or you can download a copy from the source.
For its branding images, Canadian Atheist generally uses Exo 2 at a semi-bold weight (CSS weight value 600), with the letter spacing and word spacing set to 105% of the intrinsic spacing values relative to the font size (so at a 100 pixel font size, the letter and word spacing are both 5 pixels more than the intrinsic values of the font).
What are you allowed to do with the elements of Canadian Atheist’s brand?
Most of the elements of Canadian Atheist’s branding are copyrighted: particularly the logo and the name “Canadian Atheist” rendered into various languages (listed above) in the correct font specification. Canadian Atheist protects these copyrights as a way of protecting its identity and integrity from being stolen or damaged by others.
While Canadian Atheist protects its copyrights, permissions are granted for the use of its copyrighted branding elements, subject to certain restrictions. Below is a non-exclusive things you can and can’t do with CA’s copyrighted branding elements.
- You can do anything that would fall under the definition of “fair dealing”, or any of the other exceptions to copyright law enumerated in §29–32 of the Copyright Act. This includes research, private study, education, parody, satire, criticism or review, news reporting, and so on.
- You can use Canadian Atheist’s copyrighted branding elements in your own works (your own site, app, or blog, art, or other works) provided:
- the element is being used specifically to clearly identify Canadian Atheist, and cannot reasonably be mistaken for identifying any other entity
- the element is being used in a way that makes it absolutely clear that Canadian Atheist is not associated with your work, and does not endorse it any way
- the element is based on an official download, and not modified except for possibly being uniformly scaled up or down, or converted to another image format
- the element is visible in its entirety
- the element is not placed over, covered by, or mixed with anything else that might be mistaken for part of the element or that make it difficult to clearly identify it; and
- the element is not scaled up or down to the point it is difficult to see or identify.
- You cannot use Canadian Atheist’s copyrighted branding elements as an avatar on social media, or anywhere else.
If you have any further questions about what you are allowed to do with Canadian Atheist’s copyrighted branding elements, or if you would like to request special permissions, exemptions, or design modifications (to better match your site’s aesthetic, for example), feel free to contact us.