Everybody is quite familiar with Wikipedia, the world’s largest online resource for content about everything. On January 15, 2001 when it was officially launched, the founder Jimmy Wales used the American flag “Old Glory” as its logo; but it turned out to be a bad idea and attracted widespread criticism.
People called it “Ethno centric” biased approach. Being the fastest growing and largest source of multilingual content with over 14 million articles, this logo seemed to be irrelevant to the Wikipedia concept.
The icon of such a great global resource should suggest global representation. It should portray an exclusive image and objective.
Wikipedia people realized this and they asked Wikipedians and logo designers to put forward their concepts and recommendations to create a new logo for Wikipedia. Thus, an international competition was held and the new logo was selected with little amendments. Paul Satafincer of Wiki Networks won with his globe like concept. He received appreciation as the new logo represented global reach and extensive information accessible by everyone.
The logo of Wikipedia, as we see today, has a 3D globe like sphere with puzzle concept and it perfectly represents the largest multilingual encyclopedia online.
Shape: Logo holds a 3D globe sphere with puzzle concept. It communicates that Wikipedia is a global source of information for people worldwide and there is content available on almost everything humans are familiar with. You will notice a few missing puzzles, which means that Wikipedia also carries the information which is distinctive and evolving with the time. With the characters of different languages embossed on puzzles communicate that Wikipedia is a multilingual source of information. These embossed characters and 3D globe sphere reflect authenticity and strength of information.
Colour: The light shade of grey, with soft tone, indicates elegant and professional approach as well as simplicity. The sober colour and tint mirror integrity and sophistication.
Font: Serif font style with sharp edges is classic, noticeable and straight forward. You will notice that the tag line is in italic and communicating the message “The Free Encyclopedia”.
Today, Wikipedia logo is one of the most popular logo designs on the World Wide Web and becomes a symbol to promote knowledge sharing, contributing intelligently for the free access of information for our generations.
