The logo of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia depicts a white, incomplete globe-shaped jigsaw puzzle, each jigsaw piece inscribed with a glyph from a different writing system. As displayed on the web pages of the English-language edition of the project, there is the wordmark "WIKIPEDIA" (styled as ) beside the globe, and below that, the text "The Free Encyclopedia" in the open-source Linux Libertine font.
The unfinished puzzle symbolizes the project's state as a perpetual work in progress.
Design and history Early logos (2001)
In January 2001, Jimmy Wales used the flag of the United States as a placeholder logo for Wikipedia's UseModWiki instance. Wikipedia's first true logo was an image originally submitted by Bjørn Smestad—under the username Bjornsm—for a Nupedia logo competition which took place in 2000. It was used provisionally as Wikipedia's logo until the end of 2001.
The logo included a quote from the preface of the 1879 book Euclid and his Modern Rivals by Lewis Carroll. It utilized the fisheye effect to make the text appear to be wrapped onto a sphere, leaving only part of it readable. The used text was (visible text in ):
In November 2001, Wikipedia users began suggesting new logos for the website. A list of 24 leading candidates was chosen in the contest, which took place from November to December 2001. The winner was the last logo (#24), contributed by the user The Cunctator.
The logo included the quote, taken from Thomas Hobbes's 1651 book Leviathan, from chapter VI of part I, placed within the circle and distorted by the fisheye effect. Underneath it was written "Wikipedia" in the capital letters, with W and A being slightly taller than the others. Beneath that was placed the motto of Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. The text used for the logo was (visible text in ):
As the logo utilized text in English language, its usage was not favored by other-language versions of Wikipedia. Some websites used similar designs with texts in their own languages. For example, Dutch Wikipedia used text from Multatuli's 1860 Max Havelaar classic book. Other websites used the logo with English text, painted in the colours of the national flags. Such design was used for example by Danish and Swedish versions, using the flags of Denmark and Sweden, respectively. The other option used by some versions of Wikipedia was to design their own distinct logos, for example the French Wikipedia, which used the green circle with a white dove on it, as its logo. Additionally, some websites used a logo with English text in it, with the motto "The Free Encyclopedia" translated to their languages. It was done, for example, by the German Wikipedia.
Puzzle globe (2003)
Contest
In 2003, following a suggestion by Erik Möller, known under the username Eloquence, an international logo contest was conducted to find a new logo that was suitable for all language versions of Wikipedia. After a two-stage voting process, a design by Paul Stansifer, at the time known under username Paullusmagnus, won with considerable support. His project depicted an unfinished globe constructed of puzzle pieces, of multiple colors. It was covered by text with links in various languages and writing systems, to symbolize the continuous construction and development of the project. It was made in POV-Ray, using a puzzle image wrapped around a sphere.
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 the propositions made by David Friedland, known under username Nohat, was chosen. Friedland removed the color and changed the overlaid text into one letter or symbol per puzzle piece. His design included various characters from various writing systems. The writing in the logo used Hoefler Text font.
Before being officially released, the logo slightly lightened up and had replaced nearly obsolete kana wi () from katakana script with modern kana wa () and small i (). A smooth breathing mark before the Greek omega () was deleted and Russian Short I () replaced by Russian I (). It was adopted by the English Wikipedia on 26 September 2003.
Final version The logo included 16 characters from 16 different writing scripts, many of which, but not all, chosen to represent due to their similarity to the letter W from the English language, as in the name Wikipedia. The alphabets represented were as follows:
+ Table with location of glyphs in the 2003 logo Armenian ini(, transcription: i) Khmer lo(, transcription: lɔɔ) Japanese Katakana wa + small i() Klingon r(, transcription: r) Tibetan wa + i(, transcription: wi) Greek capital omega(, transcription: o) Latin capital W Arabic isolated yodh(, transcription: y) Devanagari va + i(, transcription: vi) Simplified Chinese radical 145+5 strokes(, pinyin: jù, jiē) Cyrillic capital I(, transcription: i) Hangulcombined letters ieung, u and i(, transcription: wi) Mongolian Todo I (rotated 90 degrees)(, transcription: i) Kannada va + i(, transcription: vi) Hebrew resh(, transcription: r) Thai chà(, transcription: ch)
+ Two versions of the 2003 logo Version with and Version with and (and with )(and with )Examples:PortugueseExamples:Simple EnglishExamples:FrenchEnglishChineseEnglish ΩGreek capital omega(, transcription: o) ΏGreek capital omega with tonos(, transcription: ó) ИCyrillic capital I(, transcription: i) ЙCyrillic capital Short I(, transcription: y) The logo included several mistakes. Due to a formatting error: letters va + i () from Devanagari script were rendered incorrectly, being reversed in the process, showing as (). In the combined letters va + i () from Kannada script, the diacritic was attached to the wrong place. In the case of the Japanese katakana, a wrong kana was used: wa () was mistakenly used instead of kana u (), forming wai (), instead of wi (), which is present in the Japanese name of the website, Wikipedia ().
Redesign (2010)
In late 2009, the Wikimedia Foundation undertook the efforts to fix the errors and generally update the puzzle globe logo. Among other concerns, the original logo 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 design was published in May 2010. It features the new 3D rendering of the puzzle globe, as well as correct versions of previously wrong characters, including fixed versions of letters from Kannada and Devanagari, and usage of correct Japanese katakana characters. Additionally, several letters had been replaced by others. It included: ini () being replaced with vev (), both originating from the Armenian alphabet; letter lo () being replaced with combined letters vo and i (), both originating from the Khmer script; combined letters wa and i () from Tibetan script being replaced by short u () letter from Bengali alphabet, while Tibetan character was moved elsewhere; letter Todo I () from Mongolian script being replaced by letter vini () from the Georgian Mkhedruli script; radical 145+5 strokes () from Simplified Chinese script being replaced by radical 120+8 strokes () from the Traditional Chinese script. letter resh () being replaced by letter vav (), both originating from the Hebrew alphabet; r () from Klingon pIqaD script being replaced by letter wə () from the Ethiopic scripts; letter yodh () being replaced by letter waw (), both originating from the Arabic script; letter cho () being replaced by combined letters wo waen and sara i (), both originating from the Thai script.
The wordmark has been modified from the Hoefler Text font to the open-source Linux Libertine font, and the subtitle was no longer italicized. The "W" character, which was used in various other places in Wikipedia, such as the favicon, and was seen as a distinctive part of the Wikipedia brand, was stylized as crossed Vs in the original logo, while the W in Linux Libertine was rendered with a single line. To provide the traditional appearance of the Wikipedia "W", a "crossed" W was added as an OpenType variant to the Linux Libertine font.
Glyphs in the Wikipedia logo redesign (2010) For the new logo, the entire surface of its globe was designed, including puzzle pieces hidden on the non-visible parts of the logo. In total, there were designed 51 puzzle pieces, of which 18 were visible in the logo. There were 21 empty spaces left, for the missing puzzle pieces.
The visible puzzle pieces are: in the leftmost column, from the top down: capital letter vev (, transcription: v) from the Armenian alphabet, combined letters vo and i (, transcription: vi) from the Khmer script, letter short u (, transcription: u) from the Bengali alphabet, combined letters va and i (, transcription: vi) from the Devanagari script, letter vini (, transcription: v) from the Georgian Mkhedruli script; in the middle-left column, from the top down: capital letter omega (, transcription: o) from the Greek alphabet, radical 120 with 8 additional strokes (, pinyin: wei) from the Traditional Chinese script, combined letters va and i (, transcription: vi) from the Kannada script, combined letters wa and i (, transcription: wi) from the Tibetan script; in the middle-right column, from the top down: kanas u and small i (, romanization: wi) from the katakana script, capital letter W from the Latin script, capital letter i (, transcription: i) from the Cyrillic script, letter vav (, transcription: v) from the Hebrew alphabet, combined letters va and i (, transcription: vi) from the Tamil script; in the rightmost column, from the top down: letter wə (, transcription: wə) from the Ethiopic scripts, isolated letter waw (, transcription: w) from the Arabic alphabet, combined letters ieung, u and i (, transcription: wi) from the Hangul script, combined letters wo waen and sara i (, transcription: vi) from the Thai script.
The puzzle pieces from the not visible portion of the logo are: in the central left column, from the top down: capital letter V from the Latin script, combined letters yodh and aleph (, transcription: yā) from the Arabic alphabet; in the first row to the left from the central left column, from the top down: capital letter wi (, romanization: wi) from the Cherokee syllabary, letter wa (, transcription: v) from the Tai Le script, capital letter pi (, transcription: p) from the Greek alphabet; in the second row to the left from the central left column, from the top down: combined letters va and i (, transcription: vi) from the Telugu script, capital letter E-acute (É) from the Latin script, combined letters v and i (, transcription: vi) from the Burmese script, letter short u (, romanization: u) from the Inuktitut syllabary, combined letters wa and i () from the Limbu script; in the third row to the left from the central left column, from the top down: letter winja (, transcription: w) from the Gothic alphabet, combined letters wa and i (, transcription: wi) from the Odia script, combined letters va and i (, transcription: vi) from the Malayalam script, letter wa (, transcription: w) from the Mongolian script; in the fourth row to the left from the central left column, from the top down: combined letters va and i (, transcription: vi) from the Gujarati script, combined letters wa and i (, transcription: wi) from the Lontara script, letter vede (, transcription: vi) from the Glagolitic script, capital letter U from the Latin script; in the central right column, from the top down: capital letter de (, transcription: d) from the Cyrillic script, capital dotted I (İ) from the Latin script; in the first row to the right from the central right column: combined letters va and i (, transcription: vi) from the Sinhalese script;