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List:       wikitech-l
Subject:    [Wikitech-l] Re: New logo and further process
From:       David Friedland <david () nohat ! net>
Date:       2003-09-26 16:29:11
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tarquin wrote:
> 
> 
> Gutza wrote:
> 
>>
>> Ok, but what can you do? The voting has been fair (give or take, but 
>> the overall result can't be contested). That's what people want, what 
>> can you do? Really, what *can* you do?
>>
> Well since we can "ratify", I'm voting to ratify a different finalist.
> 
> The current winner should be disqualified on technical grounds -- it 
> simply does not meet the design brief of the competition.

I agree. Indeed, the current winner should have been disqualified when 
people first raised their objections to it. There doesn't seem to have 
been made any effort to ensure that the submussions met the 
requirements, as if they were merely suggestions. I also think that the 
fact that currently there are 73 votes on the English Wikipedia 
ratification, and 41% are against is a strong sign that there are a lot 
of others who agree with me and tarquin. I think that in an organization 
that prides itself on consensus, some effort should be made to address 
the dissenters' concerns.

Part of the problem perhaps is that no one has been able to clearly 
articulate exactly why the current winner will make a bad logo. Here's 
my attempt:

(1) A logo should be simple. It should be possible to grok it entirely 
in moments. It should be unambiguous. A logo should not be a diagram. 
The current winner fails all these tests.

(2) The purpose of this logo selection is not just to select an image 
for /upload/wiki.png. It is to selet an identity for the entire 
Wikipedia project. It may be used on letterhead, clothes, hats, pens, 
mousepads, etc. It will be used in tiny places, so it should look good 
(not just "acceptable") in small sizes. The advice for logo designers I 
once read is "if it's not simple enough to work as cufflinks, it's not 
simple enough". The current winner will not look good at small sizes. 
(It barely looks good at the current size).

(3) It will be used in conjunction with other visual elements. It should 
  be able to blend in aesthetically with a wide diversity of other 
elements and not stand out or clash. It should be able to be used in 
grayscale environments and black-and-white environments.

(4) *** This is the biggest one: a logo should NOT contain words that 
are not part of the name or the slogan of the organization it 
represents! I recognize that Wikipedia is mostly about text, but the way 
that has been symbolized in the current winning logo, fails. The best 
way to symbolize text is with 1, 2 or maybe 3 graphemes or as lines on a 
page, but not a whole mess of them, reduced to point of illegibility.

My biggest objection to the current winner is all those words. I imagine 
myself encountering it for the first time, and asking myself: What do 
they mean? What is their significance? Why can't I read them all? Is 
there some essential aspect of the Wikipedia embedded in these words 
that I can't understand? I must be missing something! Why should I be 
interested in this project if I can't even understand the logo?

I have a feeling, but I am not certain, that there would be a lot less 
objection to the winner if all the text was removed from it. I still 
think it would be ugly, but it would at least be a workable logo in that 
state.

I have gone to the effort of collecting some famous and successful logos 
from around the web and put them at http://www.nohat.net/logos.html. I 
put them at my personal web site because I'm not sure how well deep 
linking would work on the meta wiki. What makes these logos successful 
is they are all simple, memorable, and can work in a variety of environments

I understand that it may be frustrating to those who put in a lot of 
effort on the vote and process to have the final result disputed, and I 
really am sorry for those people, but such is the way of the wiki...

- David [[User:Nohat]]

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