International logo contest/Final logo variants/Paullusmagnus

2003 Wikipedia international logo contest (logo comments, Paullusmagnus)

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

Paullusmagnus' versions

A quick hack

I tried to apply a few of the different tactics I mentioned on image talk:paullusmagnus-logo_(small).png/development here (new one on the right):

(smaller text, different font, greater Kerning, space between lines, 135 pixels wide, more seperation from "WIKIPEDIA".) I think that I accidentally made it brighter than it should have been.

(fixed fadedness -- Paullusmagnus 22:09, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC))

I think that it looks uglier, but I can't quite say why... Does anyone see it, or am I imagining things? Paullusmagnus 17:42, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I think this revision is better than the original. The colors are less distracting and so on. I still don't think each peice should be a seperate color. For one, no puzzles are really like that. Secondly, it still reminds me of the MS Office logo even as a sphere. Third the colors are distracting. Below I posted a variation using Saturn as the coloring and including Saturn's rings. Unfortunatly I'm no artist so the image looks really unrefined, but does convey the idea. But overall I think this new version of your original logo is better than the original in almost every way. Robert Lee

I like the track youre on-- the text still bugs me, though. Keep in mind that its black text on black puzzlelines--the intended evoking of symbols that you want doesnt come through at all. (BTW I just set up pov ray to render last night and didnt quite get a good output-- or maybe that was the preview). The faded colors are more appealing, Paul, though I would ask that you might upload a layered format document, with the colors and text as separate elements, over a blank white sphere. You can do it in .psd format for Photoshop (and gimp)users, and use a moderate resolution, like as low as 400x400. I may do it later today if I can get a good render of the sphere.Stevertigo 18:27, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

The colors are far too bright, IMHO, and I'd like to see a variant without text but with colored pieces. But before you experiment further, could you upload a variant which only has the changes to the size of the logo/text and the logo/text distance, so I can replace the one currently on En: (these changes seem to be uncontroversial)?—Eloquence 02:10, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Great! just make it not so faded. Make a large one so we can see the text better. Also, put some links.

I fixed the fadedness (it turns out I forgot to tell the GIMP to save the gamma value of the PNG file). I still need to manually reclarify the shrunken text and maybe fade the text as well... Paullusmagnus 22:09, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

If that's OK with you, I'll replace the version currently used on en: with the one above ASAP. It would be nice if the logo could be 135x135 like the old one.—Eloquence 22:16, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yes. The logo is 135 pixels wide (if I didn't flub up), but I let it grow a bit taller. How important is keeping the height under control? Paullusmagnus 23:07, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Not sure. The sidebar is pretty far at the bottom in some configurations with all the links displayed (and with floating enabled it has no scrollbars), so I'd like to avoid it getting too high, but we can probably deal with <150. In any case, making it less high would have the (IMHO) added benefit of making the sphere somewhat smaller, which would make it look less overwhelming in relation to the text.—Eloquence 23:18, 29 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I still don't like that dark gray piece. Why not make it light like the rest of the gray?

I like the colors, and the fact that the words run across puzzle pieces. Could you add a halo and a shadow like Gutza's logo? I think this would make it even better. -User:pgan002 13 Oct 2003 (EST)

I prefer the color one than the gray one now is using... --Gboy 11:19, 17 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Logo details

Other formats/color depths

Some people have expressed concerns about the visual versatility of the logo. (If any of these have a black logo instead of a transparent one, it is because Internet Explorer doesn't support transparent PNGs automatically. This can be fixed for "real" use)

Black and white (first one has antialiasing by Stevertigo):

http://meta.wikipedia.org/upload/archive/7/75/20030919024940!Paullusmagnus-logo_(small)_reloaded.png

Favicons:

Source files

Watch out: some of these files are very large.

Text: Just a screenshot of text copied from a wide variety of Wikipedias with different character sets.
- This is a sample to show how text might be merged with the puzzle pieces.
Puzzle pieces: Generated with a GIMP plugin (alternately, I created a POV-Ray scene to generate a puzzle with a more irregularly-shaped pieces, but that idea is collecting dust). (All GIMP plugins used come with the program.)
Surface of sphere: Puzzle pieces from the top are removed to make the puzzle incomplete, some pieces are colored. The text is "burned" onto the pieces in the GIMP. Image:Paullusmagnus-logo_(surface_of_sphere).png
- The text alone: Image:Big_text.png
- The puzzle pieces alone: Image:Big_puzz.png
- Back of the sphere: The puzzle-and-text is changed to solid gray (leaving transparent areas alone) to make the sphere backer. Image:Paullusmagnus-logo_(back_of_sphere).png

Rendering: In POV-Ray, the image is wrapped around a sphere, leaving a hole in the transparent area. A large number of spheres colored with the gray backer slightly decreasing in size from the previous are used to give the pieces width. File:Paullusmagnus-logo (POV-Ray scene).pov

Image:Paullusmagnus-logo_(just_sphere).png (large raster image of output.)

Touchup: In the GIMP, the corners between pieces are shrunk with the IWarp plugin, noise is added to the back and sides of the pieces. "WIKIPEDIA" is added in the font Garamond (for the English Wikipedia)

Image:Paullusmagnus-logo_(large).png

Shrinking: The image is shrunk to 150 x 150 pixels, and some areas of very small text are manually made to look clearer. The serifs on the text are also touched up. This is the main submission.