Wikipedia Logo - Design and History




Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, encyclopedia project operated by the not-for-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Many language versions of Wikipedia are free content, while others, such as the English version, include non-free material. As of September 2007, Wikipedia had approximately 8.29 million articles in 253 languages, comprising a combined total of over 1.41 billion words for all Wikipedias. The English Wikipedia edition passed the 2,000,000 article mark on September 9, 2007, and as of November 3, 2007 it had over 2,075,000 articles consisting of over 902,000,000 words. Wikipedia's articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world and the vast majority of them can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet. Steadily rising in popularity since its inception, it currently ranks among the top ten most-visited websites worldwide.

The logo is one of my favorite logos. It captures the essence of what the site stands for in my mind. The logo was selected as part of an international logo design contest. The logo is a jigsaw puzzle in the shape of the globe with the alphabets in many languages written all over the globe. .


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Tux - The Linux Penguin Logo - Design and History

Tux the Linux Penguin Logo



Anyway familiar with Linux has seen its logo, Tux the penguin, but I am not sure how many of you knew his name or how he originated. In 1996 when the OS was picking up steam, there was a suggestion to design a logo for the Linux operating system. Many designers came up with the logos, some being parodies of other Unix flavors while others were based on animals such the shark and eagle. Linus Torvalds, mentioned that he was rather fond of penguins and then the entire focus shifted to building a penguin based logo. In one of his emails, Linux gave his thoughts on how the penguin should look like and Tux was born out of that ideas. 

Why was he called Tux. There are a couple of theories here.

  • The first was (T)orvalds (U)ni(X) which resulted in TUX
  • The other reason was that penguins look like they are wearing a Tuxedo.

Some of the other names included Homer (from the Simpsons) and Linnie.


Read more: Tux - The Linux Penguin Logo - Design and History