Why does it say 'site design / logo' before the copyright symbol at the bottom of every page?

Question

I apologise if it's obvious, but I don't know why.

At the bottom of each page on the SE network it says:

site design / logo © 2014 stack exchange inc; user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required rev 2014.7.2.2353

I get what the rest of it is for, but what is the 'site design / logo' part for?

Does it mean 'The site design and logo are copyrighted by Stack Exchange in 2014'?

If it does mean that, is this a standard way to write it? Could an SE dev spare a second to shed some light on why it's written like that?

I know it doesn't matter. I'm just curious.

Answer 1

Because it's the site design and logo that's copyrighted. If you read it out it make more sense:

The site design and logo are copyright 2014 by Stack Exchange Inc...

It means that you can't copy the design and logo. It's a fairly standard shorthand way of saying it. It uses the minimum of words and symbols necessary so it takes up less space on the page.

The site content is provided under the cc-by-sa license which means you can copy it with attribution.

Answer 2

Because Jeff Atwood decided:

It's not a complete sentence, so it doesn't need to be capitalized

and got downvoted to -45 as of now.

I hope the SE team will reconsider this design decision. For a long time, lowercase punctuation-free fragments were here and there around over the sites:

what's your ... question? be specific

possible duplicate of

Things have improved in other areas, but not yet in the footer.

See also: Why is the footer copyright declaration in lowercase?