International logo contest/Final logo variants/Jamesday

2003 Wikipedia international logo contest (logo comments, Jamesday)

This was an international contest held from July 20 to August 27 2003, gathering 150 proposals. After the early proposal by Chuck Smith on October 12, 2002, the contest was first proposed on June 14, 2003 by Erik Moeller, who argued that the logo (adopted in January 2002 from the Logo suggestions) was unaesthetic, not international, and portrayed a text-only Wikipedia.

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Preparation Vote on voting method Vote instructions Select ten finalists from the submitted proposals. Logos 1-25 Logos 26-50 Logos 51-75 Logos 76-100 Logos 101-125 Logos 126-150 All logos on one page Select the winning logo. Finalists Ballot and invalid ballots Ratify logo selection. Results Ratification Final logo variants and subpages

Jamesday's variant

This one concentrates on the technical goals: it must scale and it must work in bicolor or grayscale, even at small sizes for printing on pens or for grayscale laser printing. These are quick hacks with MS Paint. To get a somewhat meaningful bilevel version I eliminated the uncolored pieces, so that the bilevel version retains a clear jigsaw look. Still needs work - the pieces aren't particularly attractive and some need to be moved around for a visually pleasing version - but it illustrates the concept. Text is sans-serif because it scale better to smaller sizes. Darkened because that also helps scaling. Greater spacing between characters is needed because that helps to keep the letters distinct at small sizes - the IK and IP pairs still aren't quite right with this spacing. At full size this is not as attractive as the current proposal, so maybe really pale pieces, which vanish when viewed in grayscale or bilevel, would work better. At the lower right are scaled/ grayscale/ bilevel versions of the original winner, for comparison. Note the comparative illegibility of the text and the lack of a really well distinguished globe or pattern in bilevel. Suggest that we borrow from the font hinting principle and have the text on the pieces vanish below certain sizes. It adds welcome complexity at full size but when you get to icon sizes it hides the colors and makes the pattern less clear. The winner seemed most attractive to me but the technical issues highlighted here caused me not to favor it. Can we find a way to resolve them? JamesDay 11:11, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I like this one the best so far. Its a little rough around the edges just like the wikipedia itself. In fact, the quality of the antialiasing in your logo kinda reminds me of the quality of wikipedia's articles themselves. Especially the missing puzzle pieces in the middle of the sphere just like the missing information in the middle of each of the articles. I would make one suggestion though. Could you put little hangy Chads on the edges of some of the pieces to represent the useless and trivial information that makes up about 80% of the 300,000+ articles? Actually I think I was bit by the w:sarcasm bug and think I should use this opportunity to apologize to you and for the guys at Microsoft who wrote MS Paint in the first place, because I have to hold them at least partially responsible. Robert Lee