Rather than jump right into voting on logos, consider starting the logo redesign process by writing a w:Creative brief. Consider asking for advice from the Wikimedia Design Team and well known like (w:Susan Kare, w:Jeffrey Zeldman, w:Simon Oxley). A lot of designers will see this as a significant opportunity since there are few opportunities to design a logo for a well known software project that will also appear on every single page of Wikipedia in the "powered by MediaWiki" badge. A design brief might include the following topics:
Background — what is the background of the project? Why is it being done?
Target audience — what do they already think about this subject? Is there anything that should be avoided?
Profile of the typical user or consumer
Key insight - what has been learned about the market's attitude to the company, brand or product
Single message — what is the one thing to tell the audience? What is the single thing they should remember about the offering? How will they believe what we say?
I agree that soliciting logo ideas is a great idea. I wouldn't bother with a detailed creative brief, though, because getting people to agree on this kind of thing ("key insight", etc.) is probably even harder than getting people to agree on a logo.
I agree that it feels premature to start directly with a vote on specific outcomes. That said, if the vote was status quo vs. almost anything else, I'd vote in favour of changing away from the logo, so…
Is it me only, or the new logo ("pink flower", no longer a sunflower) looks very much like the logo for BP (except it is green, not pink). In 2001, in response to negative press on British Petroleum's poor safety standards, the company adopted a green sunburst logo and rebranded itself as BP plc ("Beyond Petroleum").
Note that the BP green sunburst logo even predates the yellow sunflower logo used for MediaWiki (Mediawiki was created in 2002, one year after BP adopted its logo): we cannot argue that our use of the *generic* sunflower since years grants us an exclusive right, it was acceptable *only* with the distinctive "MediaWiki" wordmark added, making it really distinctive.
See BP in English Wikipedia (showing the logo w:en:File:BP Helios logo.svg hosted only in Wikipedia under "fair use", not suitable for Commons where it was deleted multiple times).
Printing it will be difficult; the former logo for Mediawiki was already difficult to print.
When registering it for protection, we'll have difficulty to protect it with a black&white only design (and distinctively enough from the design for BP logo if it was registered as well in black&white only); the former logo could not be protected and was not protected.
In monochrome version (or for colorblind people), the confusion between BP and Mediawiki will be evident without the added wordmark!
This means that the new logo only works with hi-color devices where it is sufficiently distinctive but will stioll not be a strong mark without associating it with the wordmark "MediaWiki" (this was already the case, but the horizontal metrics of the former logo allowed placing the wordmark easily below the logo to fit a square.
Finally the mere image of a flower (without the wordmark) does not qualify it for registration and a protection: there are **lot** of uses of flowers/suns/mandalas internationally, including on national or religious flags (e.g. in Taiwan or India). So we've not solved anything: what is protected is the wordmark "MediaWiki" (independantly of the presence of absence of the logo above it).
We could have designed something that was still a sunflower, but not needing high-colors, preserving the identity of sunflowers (notably the central area with the golden-ratio spirals, absent from the BP logo), but more symbolically represented rather than being a mere photo. We could have then kept the yellow/orange colors without requiring hi-colors, and with a black&white shape that was still distinctive abnd not requiring the presence of the wormark (still impossible with the new logo for its "favicon" at 16x16 logical pixels, rendered at 24x24 or 32x32 resolution on HiDPI devices).
Unfortunately, the contest for the 2020 Mediawiki logo occured in August only, and it was a too short time to get many people contribute to it (and many were in holiday) so the short vote (2 weeks in September, still many people were taking their holiday only at that time, and it was not anounced to anough people on enough Wikimedia sites or other channels) was biased by the limitation of choice and even if it was "adopted", the WMF legal department has still not been able to formally announce its adoption.
Designing a logo should be a long process with a long period of propositions and discussions: voting immediately after one month of proposition (and with a procedure that was not formalized before the final vote) is not a good idea (this has already caused a problem with Wikivoyage that was required to change it logo in 2013 (after an legal action initiated by the WTO).
For this reason, the period of submission should be at least 3 months (since its announcement to as many places as possible). We should have the time to prepare at least 6 very different designs, discuss all technical and legal problems, fixing them, discussing of alternatives for specific uses (e.g. monochrome, low resolution, printing, search for similarities).
The problem is that the sunflower looks best only with hi-color devices. For printing, or on monochrome displays, it looks very bad (as the needed details have very low contrasts): you then jsut see a flower, all yellows are flattened. This makes a very poor logo at small sizes (e.g. favicons).
And as it is just a photo, it has no distinctive visual identity (only added by the surrounding square brackets, and the fact the logo is actually always used with the wordmark).
A better distinctive logo was needed since long, taking into account the experience. The old logo was designed fast, and in fact could not even be protected, so it was effectively in public domain (except when combined with the registered wordmark) and the logo could then be used abusively, but still legally (without the protected wordmark).
If proposal 6 was successful, proposal 5 also should have been successful. Seems like another attempt by the initiator/closer (yes, they are the same person) to use their own point of view
Yeah I think someone needs to reevaluate this closure. The fact that it was closed by not only someone heavily involved but '''the person who started the proposal''' does not help either
It's not just the percentage, it's the number too, 60 support vs. 12 support is much smaller in borderline cases. I would be happy if someone double check this. How the actual number is a mistake?
I don't think we should accept anything lower than 70% TBH. At least for RfAs, RfCs and other things, nothing below 70% passes unless a very good reason (as a 'crat)
It don't change the picture, there is only one proposal with 74% (63 votes pro), the other two options with the most votes have 56% (29 votes pro) and 61% (25 votes pro). In ruwiki we have 2/3 = 66,(6) as usual border (for admins votes) and 3/4=75% for buerocrats votes.
Why was it changed from 71% though? At least proposal 5 is a variant on the current logo. All of the options in proposal 6 are terrible. People should be able to vote between specifically those two.
Yes, but 1- 60% is still pretty small, I don't recall any successful RfC in any wiki that would pass with that percentage 2- The opposes in this proposal seem to be pretty stronger than the other proposals.
I taked old monochrome version, but (1) haven't manage to pick right colours, and (2) I think that smaller pieces inside with bigger outside fits better, (3) I was moving this inside a center of the flower, but it always seemed that center is not in the right place.
Some of the logo proposals have the MediaWiki wordmark as explicitly lowercase "mediawiki", some are using the current capitalization of "MediaWiki" and others are using a font that looks as all-caps so "MEDIAWIKI".
It would be good if we could clarify if we're sticking with the current MediaWiki capitalization or whether that too is up for discussion/change.
The plan is to have different wordmarks as different variants in the second round mostly because MediaWiki might good in one logo and horrible in another. So having the discussion about the wordmark independent of the logo doesn't make much sense IMO.
I'm sorry for the confusion. This time (until August 10th) is also the time for brainstorming ideas and project positioning. Do you want to help on facilitating the discussion?
Yes, I have already created a task in the Phabricator phab:T256989, and I thought someone would join it. But since no one is there, can we just create a poll about MediaWiki?
For such questions, when the result of the process is the fruit of the efforts of many people, it is important for the community to have the opportunity to express their ideas. And when we choose from these ideas, what do we pay attention to?
How to form a common image from our thoughts, shapes, colors - each represents something different. Will it be a sunflower in brackets or just some abstract allegory?
If we want to rely on the opinion of the majority, then there are many democratic processes that we can organize, for example, a vote or a poll about whether the participants like something or not. But who sits on the jury? Who makes the decision?
The more complex the decision-making process, the better it will be, but the less transparent the community's understanding of what it is. But I will not repeat myself, I'll just give a link
In one hand, I totally understand, mediawiki is a product and needs a product discussion around its brand, wordmark, logo and etc.
On the other hand, and this is really important, it's also a project in the Wikimedia movement and things need to be done the wiki-way and community needs to drive the discussion and make the calls. What I am doing in this discussion is basically duplicate of the process wikivoyage and wiktionary followed a couple of years ago (while it wasn't perfect, I admit) but doing it any other way will likely backfire (m:COLOR). So I highly recommand, having the discussion in one place, in a wiki, the wiki way.
The team busy with rebranding would probably love to work with a community open to change. You have made a case to change the logo. Maybe the team of the (re)branding project can help with contracting a designer, Snøhetta, or someone else, to do the research and design. Pinging @ZMcCune (WMF) what do you think?
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