[Foundation-l] Divergent Wiktionary logos

[Jay Walsh]

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>
>