Wikipedia:Wikipedia logos - Wikipedia
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Not to be confused with
Wikimedia logos
For using logos in Wikipedia belonging to others, see
Wikipedia:Logos
The fourth (and current) Wikipedia logo, also known as "v2", was unveiled in May 2010
Wikipedia
had a series of
logos
in its history before arriving at the current puzzle ball logo.
The first official logo
edit
The first Wikipedia logo
Wikipedia's first true logo was an image that was originally submitted by
Bjørn Smestad
for a
Nupedia
logo competition which took place in 2000.
It continued to be used after this time on Special Pages, such as search results.
The logo included a quote from the
preface
of the 1879 book
Euclid and his Modern Rivals
by
Lewis Carroll
; due to the
fisheye
effect, only part of the text can be read:
In one respect this book is an experiment, and may chance to
prove a failure
: I mean that I have not thought it neces
sary to maintain throu
ghout the gravity of style which
scientific writers usually
affect, and which has somehow
come to be regarded as an
‘inseparable accident’ of scie
ntific teaching. I never co
uld quite see the reasonab
leness of this immemorial law:
subjects there are, no do
ubt, which are in their essence
too serious to admit of any
lightness of treatment – but
I cannot recognise Geome
try as one of them. Neverthe
less it will, I trust, be fou
nd that I have permitted my
self a glimpse of the comic side
of things only at fitting sea
sons, when the tired reader might well
crave a moment’s
breathing-space, and not on any occasion where it could endanger the continuity of the line of argument.
The second logo
edit
The second Wikipedia logo
In November 2001, Wikipedians began
suggesting new logos
. A
short list of 24 leading candidates
was chosen in the first Wikipedia logo contest, which took place from November to December 2001. The winner was the last logo (#24), contributed by
The Cunctator
The logo included the following quote, taken from
Thomas Hobbes
's 1651 book
Leviathan
Part I, Chapter VI
Desire to know why, and how, curiosity; such as is in no living creature but man: so that
man is distinguished, not only by his reason, but also by this singular passion from other animals;
in whom the appetite of food, and other pleasures of sense, by predominance, take away the care of knowing causes;
which is a lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of knowledge, exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal pleasure.
International adaptations
edit
Because of its English text, this logo was not ideal for the Wikipedias in other languages. Some wikis chose a similar design with text in their own languages (e.g. the
Dutch Wikipedia
that used a text from the classic book
Max Havelaar
). Others used the English logo but added the color of a national flag (most of the
Nordic
language projects,
Danish
, for example) or simply a translation of "The Free Encyclopedia" (e.g.
German
). Still others designed a completely different logo (e.g. the
French Wikipedia
).
The third logo (the puzzle ball)
edit
The international contest
edit
Paul Stansifer
's contest-winning puzzle globe logo
Following a
suggestion
by
Erik Möller
, an
International logo contest
was conducted to find a new logo that was suitable for all languages. After a two-stage vote, a design by
Paul Stansifer
(at the time known as
Paullusmagnus
) won with considerable support. The
English Wikipedia
switched to it on September 26, 2003.
Stansifer's logo
depicted a puzzle globe constructed of puzzle pieces, of multiple colors. Covered by text with links, the logo was to symbolize the continuous construction and development of the project. The logo was made in
POV-Ray
, using a
puzzle image
wrapped around a sphere. (To view the original
.pov
file, see
the file on Meta
.)
The variants
edit
David Friedland's "silver ball" logo.
Typeball
of an
IBM Selectric
electric typewriter.
A ratification vote was held soon after, to confirm community consensus. As a result,
twelve direct adaptations
of the design were created by members of the community.
One of David Friedland's (
Nohat
modifications
, occasionally referred to as the "silver ball", was soon chosen. The revision of Stansifer's concept removed the color and changed the overlaid text into one letter or symbol per puzzle piece. Both Friedland and Stansifer have assigned copyrights to the logo to the
Wikimedia Foundation
Whilst symbolizing a globe the new logo also loosely resembled a
typeball
as used in some
electric typewriters
, a former metaphor for the liberation of the process of professional writing.
The finalized logo
edit
Main article:
Wikipedia logo
The third Wikipedia logo, with a caption in
Hoefler Text
Small caps
There was some controversy over switching the English Wikipedia to this logo for several reasons, one of which was the fact Wikipedia's servers were flickering throughout most of the process. Another issue was that the logo was chosen based on number of supporting votes and not the ratio of supporting:opposing votes; this nullified all the opposing votes.
Before being released to all Wikipedias, the logo was lightened up slightly.
After the
John Seigenthaler, Sr. Wikipedia biography controversy
, a column in
The Times
insinuated the logo as being a metaphor for the entire project.
Rosemary Righter
wrote "Just above the omega, at the point where, on human heads, they used to perform frontal lobotomies, bits of the jigsaw are missing."
Alphabets represented in the logo
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The symbols in the Wikipedia logo, without the background.
The puzzle logo includes 16 letters from 16 different alphabets, many of which—but not all—represent a letter from that alphabet that most closely resembles the English "W", as in "Wikipedia". The alphabets represented are as follows:
Armenian
ini
, transcription:
N/a
N/a
N/a
Khmer
lo
, transcription:
lɔɔ
N/a
Japanese
Katakana
wa
+ small
ワィ
Klingon
, transcription:
Tibetan
wa + i
ཝི
, transcription:
wi
Greek
capital
omega
, transcription:
Latin
capital
Arabic
isolated
yodh
‎, transcription:
Devanagari
va + i
वि
, transcription:
vi
Simplified Chinese
radical 145
+5 strokes
pinyin
jù
jiē
Cyrillic
capital
, transcription:
Hangul/Chosongul
wi
combined letters
ieung
and
, transcription:
wi
Mongolian
Todo I
(rotated 90 degrees)
, transcription:
Kannada
va + i
ವಿ
Hebrew
resh
‎, transcription:
Thai
chà
, transcription:
ch
There have, over the years, been suggestions that some of these characters should be changed to reflect the actual spellings of "Wikipedia" in various languages.
The May 2010 redesign
edit
The current logo with the new typeface,
Linux Libertine
In late 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation undertook to fix some errors that had been noted in the design of the puzzle globe. In particular, it did not scale well and some letters appeared distorted.
For the new logo, the Wikimedia Foundation defined which characters appear on the "hidden" puzzle pieces, and had a three-dimensional computer model of the globe created to allow the generation of other views.
The new logo was unveiled in May 2010. It is commonly referred to as "v2" or "2.0", since it represents the second (official) version of the puzzle globe logo to be adopted. It features the new 3D rendering of the puzzle globe, with corrected characters (and the
Klingon
character replaced by a
Geʿez
character). The
wordmark
has been modified from the
Hoefler Text
font to the open-source
Linux Libertine
font, and the subtitle is no longer italicized. The only error is that the Khmer letter "vo+i" is lying on its side instead of being straight. It is most likely that this error will not be fixed.
The
Wikimedia blog
has more information on the unveiling, and the
WMF Wiki
has more detailed information on the new logo.
The characters of the v2 logo
edit
N/a
N/a
N/a
N/a
N/a
N/a
N/a
N/a
N/a
N/a
Armenian
vev
N/a
N/a
N/a
N/a
N/a
N/a
N/a
N/a
Telugu
va
(i)
వి
Khmer
vo
វិ
N/a
Katakana
small i
ウィ
Gəʿəz
wə
N/a
N/a
Javanese
wa
ꦮꦶ
Gujarati
va
વિ
Gothic
winja
Latin
E-acute
(É)
Bengali
short u
Greek
omega
Latin
Arabic
waw
‎)
Gurmukhī
vava
sihari
ਵਿ
Cyrillic
ya
Syriac
wāw
Lontara
wa
ᨓᨗ
Oriya
wa
ୱି
Burmese script
ဝီ
Devanagari
va
वि
Traditional Chinese
Cyrillic
Hangul/Chosongul
wi
Tāna
vaavu
(i)
ވި
Laotian
wo
ວິ
Cyrillic
ve
Glagolitic
vědě
Malayalam
va
short i
വി
Inuktitut
short u
Georgian
vini
Kannada
va
(i)
ವಿ
Hebrew
vav
‎)
Thai
wo waen
sara i
วิ
Latin
Cyrillic
Tagalog
Baybayin
wa
ᜏᜒ
Latin
Mongolian
wa
Limbu
wa
ᤘᤡ
Cherokee
wi
Tibetan
wa
(i)
ཝི
Tamil
va
(i)
வி
Sinhala
va
වි
Latin
A-umlaut
(Ä)
Chinese character
Tai Le
wa
Latin
Cyrillic
de
Greek
pi
Arabic
yāʾ
ʾalif
يا
‎)
Latin
dotted I
(İ)
Anniversary logos
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10th anniversary logo
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Tenth anniversary logo, which replaced the puzzle ball logo across Wikipedia on January 15, 2011.
On January 15, 2011, a special logo replaced the standard globe in order to mark the tenth anniversary of Wikipedia's founding. The logo depicts a single jigsaw piece, representing the addition of another piece to the puzzle.
20th anniversary logo
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Twentieth anniversary logo
On January 14, 2021, a 4-sectioned logo was used instead of the puzzle globe, in order to mark the 20th anniversary of Wikipedia. The 4 sections depict, from top-to-bottom, left-to-right:
Yellow background, a woman reading a book with the "W" on it, signifying Wikipedia.
Blue background, a computer showing a blue screen with a "W" on it, signifying Wikipedia.
Red background, a phone showing a blue screen with a "W" on it, signifying Wikipedia.
Finally, on green background, the normal Wikipedia globe, in blue, but with most letters aside from the "W" being replaced with various other objects and symbols.
Some users complained about the visual notoriety of the logo which was found to be striking in contrast to the remainder of the Wikipedia site.
On the Czech Wikipedia, a different "cake" logo is shown, with 2, W, O, stuck in the cake.
20th anniversary second logo
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Second, less intrusive logo used for Wikipedia's twentieth anniversary
On January 22, 2021, the previous 20th anniversary logo was replaced with a less striking version, consisting of the normative Wikipedia globe above the text "20 years of Wikipedia - Over One Billion Edits".
25th anniversary logo
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In 2026, Wikipedia made a new logo, replacing the "W" piece with a blue 25 piece, in honor of Wikipedia's 25th anniversary. The wordmark has also been altered on the
English Wikipedia
, as it would say “Celebrating 25 years”, or “25 years of the free encyclopedia”.
The puzzle globe, with the 25th anniversary puzzle piece.
3D versions
edit
3D Wikipedia puzzle ball rotating along its axes (
GIF version
The first two versions of the logo were made to resemble a globe by the use of the
fish-eye effect
The third version (puzzle ball logo) was made in
POV-Ray
, a
ray tracing
program which generates 2D images from a 3D scene description. The
original 3D scene
consisted of a sphere on which a
puzzle image
was projected, as described
here
. Nohat's version introduced a
bump map
to the setup, to provide 3D
relief
and simulate separate puzzle pieces.
Truly
tridimensional models
have been created in a few variations. One provides each puzzle piece sculpted independently, to allow alternative renderings; Files are available on GitHub
in an animated version
and
a 3D printable version
. Additional 3D printable versions are available in
commons:Category:STL official Wikimedia logos
See also the thread
What is on the back of the logo?
at the foundation-l mailing list.
Physical versions
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A concrete version of the logo being lowered into
Lake Sevan
in Armenia to create an
artificial reef
Puzzle ball distributed to
Wikimania 2007
attendees
A 3D printed globe
A very large puzzle globe, dubbed the
Wikiball
, featured in
Wikimania 2007
, depicted an approximation of the Wikipedia logo. A smaller version was distributed to the participants. The large ball was dismantled after the closing ceremony, and many participants kept a piece or more of the puzzle.
In 2017, a concrete version of the logo was submerged in
Lake Sevan
to create an
artificial reef
See also
edit
Wikipedia logo
commons:Category:Characters in the Wikipedia logo
meta:Logo history
meta:Errors in the Wikipedia logo
meta:Logos
User talk:Nohat/archive_2005-02-22#Logo
Wikipedia:Banners and buttons
Wikipedia:Slogans
List of writing systems
Content guideline: using logos on Wikipedia
Notes and references
edit
Bjørn Smestad created the first Wikipedia logo according to
this archived page of submitted logos from Nupedia site
- as is seen in that page at the bottom
"Logo ideas posted with permission of their designers. Click on a logo to go to its designer's website."
Image link in that page is pointing to
this archived page
"Assistant Professor Bjørn Smestad"
"User talk:Mosca: Difference between revisions"
wikipedia.org
Righter, Rosemary (9 December 2005).
"Unreliable (adj): log on and see"
. Times Online.
m:Talk:Errors in the Wikipedia logo
UnderConsideration LLC.
"Brand New: Around the World in 51 Characters"
underconsideration.com
"CEE/Newsletter/October 2017/Full - Meta"
meta.wikimedia.org
. Retrieved
22 April
2020
Cite error: A
list-defined reference
named "klingon" is not used in the content (see the
help page
).
Cite error: A
list-defined reference
named "japanese" is not used in the content (see the
help page
).
Cite error: A
list-defined reference
named "cyrillic" is not used in the content (see the
help page
).
Cite error: A
list-defined reference
named "devanagari" is not used in the content (see the
help page
).
Cite error: A
list-defined reference
named "kannada" is not used in the content (see the
help page
).
External links
edit
Wikimedia Commons has media related to
Wikipedia logos
Some Errors Defy Fixes: A Typo in Wikipedia’s Logo Fractures the Sanskrit
— June 25, 2007.
The New York Times
Retrieved from "
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