Hi all,
Just wanted to second Cary's note - we talked about it briefly today.
A single brand identity for the project would be so much stronger, so
I encourage discussion on the matter. I completely appreciate the
challenges and how things have evolved up to this point, but it would
certainly be worth a deeper discussion and resolution.
Generally speaking we want to ensure all of the brand identities line
up across languages. I'm always impressed by the simple and elegant
way the project marks get localized in other languages/scripts but
still nicely translate with the visual style.
Best,
--
Jay Walsh
Head of Communications
WikimediaFoundation.org
+1 (415) 839 6885 x 609
On Mar 24, 2009, at 3:20 PM, Cary Bass wrote:
Hi all,
The two largest Wiktionary projects (English and French) have two
completely different logos. [1], [2]
The reason for this, from what I understand, is that a vote was taken
place about the logo fr.wiktionary currently has, on meta [3]; which
the English Wiktionary community chose not to be bound by, because
they, as a community, disagreed with the outcome.
I understand that there are complaints that new logo has elements too
closely resembling Scrabble pieces, or are otherwise too cartooned to
some. The "new" logo does maintain some visual identity as a project
logo, while the "classic" logo isn't really a logo at all, and
diverges wildly from project to project. Of the top ten Wiktionary
projects, four of them use the new version, while 6 of them use some
variation of the classic version:
fr: new
en: classic
tr: new
vi: new
ru: classic (a variation which little resembles the original)
io: classic (English version)
el: new
zh: classic (divergent variation)
pl: classic (divergent variation)
fi: classic (English version)
As a whole, I seem to remember that Wiktionary is the second most
visited site of the Foundation's websites, and I really do think it
should be appropriate that the site should reflect a common visual
identity, one that the classic logo does a poor job of creating. The
new logo, however, met with rather heavy resistance in, at the very
least, the English Wiktionary community.
I do, rather strongly, believe that the Wiktionary identity needs to
be squared away, having some poll in general inclusive of, yet binding
of all Wiktionary projects, and then if that fails, starting the
process again, and succeeding to foment an individual logo like the
recent successful Wikibooks logo revamp.
Cary
[1] <http://en.wiktionary.org>
[2] <http://fr.wiktionary.org>
[3] <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiktionary/logo>