Ignorance could be costly at times. In a bid to brand our organisations along the line of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) we sometime incorporate the SDG wheel in the logo or the publicity material of the organisation.
We too ran afoul of that with our first logo where we placed Web4SDGs at the middle of the SDG wheel. It was when we came across this guideline that we were able to make sense of our error. We have since re-developed our logo.
What is said to constitute the SDG Logo are the words “Sustainable Development Goals” together with the SDG colour wheel. There are two versions of this logo. One version displays the UN emblem above or to the left of the SDG Logo and may only be used by United Nations offices, Funds, Programmes and other subsidiary organs and organizations of the United Nations System.
The second version only contains the SDG Logo and does not display the UN emblems, and is for use by entities outside of the United Nations System governments, intergovernmental organizations, social enterprises, not-for-profit organizations, and private sector entities and others.
The implication is that SDG causes must be guided on the use of these logos.
Meanwhile, check out these images and see how you might have misused the SDG logo:
This is the full guideline released by the United Nations concerning the use of the SDG logo:
This is a whooping 68-page guideline and I guess the number of pages tell the seriousness of the matter.
Next time a little research may be helpful to get a total picture of a situation.