Logo brainstorming - San Francisco

What should the logo for the sf wiki be?

Eye in the Pyramid. —BrentLaabs

The Golden Gate Bridge combined with the Transamerica Pyramid. —Jedron

Comments

2007-09-07 07:41:19 Sutro tower? fog? Cable car? —AmyZimmerman

2007-09-23 00:46:22 This may sound kind of weird... but perhaps some kind of abstract pattern? One idea could be something mimicking the brick circles around the embarcadero center. Landmarks are nice but may be a bit too cliche. Here is what I'm talking about. —DanielWorthington

2007-09-23 13:01:49 Yeah, I vote against landmarks, too. At least no overused landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge. The circles a nice, but they might be a little too abstract. We need something that can be associated with the city. —NumiaCairaguas

2007-09-23 13:07:56 Idea roll: Hills, fog, the bay, gold, missions, peace signs, international issues, earthquakes... —NumiaCairaguas

2007-09-23 20:07:45 Simple sillouette-ish image of skyline. No cable cars, golden gate, etc. Combining too many things (like on the typical state quarter) makes it too busy. —KaiTing

2007-09-28 18:32:36 A curvy double lined lettering ala the muni logo Herebut saying SFWIKI —ElijahCombs

2007-10-04 13:01:49 I tried scribbling out something that looked like the muni logo for "WIKI" but I couldn't get it to look decent. Can anyone else scribble it well? Maybe it's not possible? Maybe I suck at scribbling? —PhilipNeustrom

2007-10-04 22:02:01 Oh, the MUNI idea is interesting. I tried a messy preliminary scribbling of "WIKI" just for kicks. It's not logo-material yet, but it's readable. Do we want the logo to be a word, though? How would we incorporate "San Francisco" into it? SFWIKI sounds good, but there's already a wiki with that name. —NumiaCairaguas

2007-10-05 00:50:58 Maybe something like this? —AmyZimmerman

Ooooh, that's nice! Is it possible to expand the K a little? I like this. —NumiaCairaguas
Haha, that's awesome! We need to clean it up a bit — do you have a larger version someone could use for tracing in a vector image program (e.g. illustrator or inkscape)
- That was just a draft. I'm not so skilled with Photoshop or other drawing programs, but I liked Eli's idea and wanted to see how well it could work. I'm sure the K could be a lot better. — AmyZimmerman
Ok everyone stop. I'm pretty sure we're done here. This is the best possible logo. Check out this free font for inspiration — MikeIvanov

Here's a side-by-side of the muni font and amy's design:

capitalized and lowercase (with dots on i's) versions.

I think the capitalized version fits the muni logo parody much better. We should nudge the letters together a bit more, and do a tad bit of cleanup. The K in the font looks better, I think. —PhilipNeustrom

It's ELI's design! —AmyZimmerman

newer draft

sfwiki_muni_draft.svg

I think "WIKI" should be smaller inside the circle and the original font for "SF" is way better, even the color. - MikeIvanov

Amy, do you remember what font you used for the "SF" part?

Arial Black

Eli says to try and experiment with non-circle muni-like designs, a-la what's on the buses/stops (rather than what's on the website).

2007-10-10 11:35:26 I agree that the Arial font looks better, but the gray looks really weird when it's placed up in the top logo area. —PhilipNeustrom

more ideas

sfwiki_muni_draft2.svg

custom "wiki" logo

sfwiki_muni_draft_custom.svg

2007-10-12 07:54:13 I don't like that so much. The I is inconsistent. Although the main reason the Muni logo is so cool is because it flows like that... —AmyZimmerman

I don't think there's really a way to make the "I" totally consistent. The question is: can you tell it's an "I?" Maybe we could add a dot to it if it's not clear? Hmmm... What I like about the "customized" logo is that it's a lot more elaborate and looks like more work went into it, and so it could stand on it's own, so to speak.

The "I" isn't visible by itself, but I can tell that it says WIKI. My mind interprets it as WIKI. Have any of you heard about that word-recognition experiment where all the words in a paragraph were scrambled, but the first and last letters of every word were left in place? It looked like gibberish, but it was totally readable. It turned out that most people's minds read by paying attention to the first and last letters of words. The rest of the letters were just shapes that the mind recognized, no matter the order. The MUNI style logo is kind of like that. —NumiaCairaguas

2007-10-19 03:10:45

(actual muni logo)

(another draft logo)

The latter is what you get if you apply the "rules" of the former — at least in my mind. —CJ

2007-10-19 15:21:45 It might be better to ignore the rules of the original muni sign and make the "I" into two vertical lines instead of one solid one. even though they don't do that in the muni one it might look truer to the original that way. —MatthiasGropp

You mean the final "I"?

2007-10-20 14:04:58

(actual muni logo)