MLD Foundation's trademarked logo is a butterfly with two profiles forming the lower wings. This butterfly with profiles represents the hope for those affected by MLD to one day be free and live a new life without MLD. This is the ultimate goal behind MLD Foundation's "We C.A.R.E." purpose.

The two facial profiles that form the lower wings on each side represent The Faces of MLD™. They are not profiles of any specific person, rather, they represent all the many children, teens, and adults affected by MLD.

Our logo was designed by Kelly Quashnie of Studio Cue in Beaverton Oregon. She is a good friend of a family with MLD and volunteered her graphic design services to create our logo, color scheme and the look of this web site.

The butterfly logo with faces in the wings and MLD Foundation logo with stylized text, a butterfly and "We C.A.R.E" are trademarks of MLD Foundation. They are used carefully to brand and identify MLD Foundation.

We are often asked if the logo can be reproduced in some form for fundraising or other purposes. The answer is usually yes, but permission must be requested in writing in advance, and may or may not be granted after careful consideration of how the logo is proposed to be used.

We created the logo to have a visually attractive focal point to increase awareness and recognition of MLD — which requires it to be used widely in public – in the proper contexts.

MLD’s recognition is growing every month thanks to the exposure we all give it through what we do, say, and through things like using attractive symbols like the butterfly.

If you desire to use any of MLD Foundation’s logos, symbols, trademarks, or copyrighted materials we simply ask that you contact us first for permission. We have granted permission to use these materials in quite a number of situations over the past months and years. When considering whether to grant permission we always consider the specific use, quality, environment, and the purpose of the requested use. The proposed use must be consistent with one of MLD Foundation’s purposes. We do not want those seeing the logos to be confused, mislead, or distracted by our logo in whatever context you may be considering – this is the purpose of our advance review.

Use must also be consistent with trademark and copyright law so we can continue to ensure our ownership rights. You may ask why be so picky? It’s really a fine line of balance of branding/recognition/awareness with proper exposure. While it is fun to do creative things in the short term we need to be careful for the long term that we maintain the integrity of the logo design and it’s affiliation with MLD and specifically MLD Foundation. For example, the butterfly with profiles concept could just as easily represent the hope of any organization that deals with a circumstance that affects children. If we allowed it to be used in any such circumstance it would lose its affiliation with MLD and that is something we do not want to happen. Kleenex, Xerox, and Google, for example, have this problem. Did you know it is against the law to “Google” something – text trademarks must be used as adjectives - never as nouns or verbs. Think “Google search”, “Xerox copy”, or “Kleenex brand tissue”

Trademark law requires we be consistent in enforcing our rights to our logos, trademarks, and other branding items. We try to be consistent in following-up on every use of the logo. This includes coping a graphic off of our web site and using it on a personal site, t-shirt, or flyer. While this is often OK with in the right context – we require you ask for permission first.

We have had a formal written policy for many years on trademarks and copyrights including how you may and may not copy/re-purpose text and links to our web site.

We use a similar “ask for permission first” process when you wish to use our web site content. https://MLDfoundation.org/legal-tm.php

As an aside ... when our name and/or logos are used as part of a fund raising campaign we have additional requirements put on us by the IRS in order to maintain our tax exempt status. Life as a non-profit can be very complicated sometimes!

Specific details can be found here.