Citizendium Blog

We have a new logo, which we are now using on the main website and soon on the wiki.

Click below to view/download larger versions.

 900px, grey

 900px, black

150px wide logos, grey:

150px wide logos, black:

Mainly because I was still on the road (!) at the logo contest deadline, we’ve put off closing the contest until, well, now.

Here is one final entry, from Kay Shearin:

The Executive Committee will now take a vote!  For all the logos, click here.

Logos continue to roll in.  Here are some from CZ editor William Weaver, who apparently thinks a religion whose famous doctrine is “no mind” is an appropriate theme for a compendium of knowledge:

Meanwhile, Paul Hitchmough knocked himself out, perhaps in more ways than one, creating these interesting ideas:

He kindly did up a few “CZ brand”-type logos:

And stole from a previous submission (we’ll give joint credit if we use this):

Note: this may be the last posting possible until the end of the year, as I will be quite busy with family stuff over the next, say, nine days or so.

Here are some nice animated gifs.  Click on them to see the animated versions:

I’ve put the second (looping) one at the bottom of http://www.citizendium.org/

Thanks to Paul Hitchmough of Manchester, England. 

Not to prejudice our choice or anything, but I had an idea for a logo concept.  Since we’ve been referring to the Citizendium as “CZ”, it seems to me that some “brand” (in the old-fashioned sense, like a cattle brand) using “CZ” might be a nice idea.  The Czechs may not love us for this, though.

More logo submissions, saved up from the last few weeks.

From David Guilbert, first a few “for fun”:

From David G. again:

Some cleaner versions of previous submissions by Ryan McCue:

More logos from Douglas Tinney:

Several of the submissions we’ve seen so far are good, and quite acceptable.  Thanks to the artists–and bear in mind, more submissions are very welcome.  The deadline is January 2.  Send submissions to admin at citizendium dot org.  For purposes of displaying your submission on this blog, JPG or GIF format preferred.  For purposes of submission, submit in any format you think right.

By the way, a nice animation would have the words ”Citizens’ Compendium” merging (using “Citiz” from the first word and “endium” from the second) to form “Citizendium”.  I’d like to see such an animation, if anyone wants to give it a try.  If it looks at all decent we’ll use it somewhere right away.

Here are our first logo submissions, in no particular order. I dare not make any critical remarks except to say I see some good stuff here. Notes:

• These are thumbnails. To see the full-size item, click on it. (And if anyone can tell me how to make WordPress display the original size instead of the thumbnail, that would be great–I know about toggling between “Using Thumbnail” and “Using Original” but this doesn’t seem to help.)
• Not only do you have to click through to a separate page to see a full-sized image, you have to click on that to see something even closer to the original. I have no clue why WordPress does this.
• These may not be the same file type as what was submitted (e.g., one person submitted tifs), which means that the results may not be high-quality. The committee will be able to look at the originals submitted.

From Ryan McCue:

From Doug Tinney:

From Kay Shearin (who says “anyone, especially anyone with more artistic ability than I have, is welcome to fool around with this concept”):

We’re announcing a contest to design the Citizendium logo.  CZ needs an upper-left logo, something that looks good in 135px by 135px.  Here are the rules and guidelines:

Rules 

(1) Submit as many logos as you like.  Mail logos to admin [at] citizendium.org.  Please give us some identifying information about yourself (not to be published without your explicit consent), such as where you live and your occupation.  If you want a short bio about yourself posted with your logo, send that with the label “public bio.”

(2) We will post logos here to this blog.  All logos will be visible via the “logo” category.

(3) On January 2, 2007 the Executive Committee will vote on the logo.  The committee will be instructed to pay attention to comments, if any, made about the logos here on this blog.

(4) The name(s) and, if desired, an appropriate weblink for the designer(s) of the winning design will be posted in the Citizendium FAQ, in our second press release, and here on this blog.  This might end up being good publicity for the simple reason that we expect lots of publicity when we launch CZ public in early 2007.

Logo guidelines 

(1) The logo should be simple and elegant and easily reproducible in black and white.

(2) Our tagline, ”The Citizens’ Compendium”, is probably important to include at this early stage.  The current logo has the tagline wrong.  It’s not “The Citizen Compendium” and also not “The Citizen’s Compendium.”

(3) What feelings, concepts, etc., should a simple and abstract logo convey?  In no particular order: curiosity, intellectual excitement, knowledge, wisdom, precision, reliability, credibility, solidity, collaboration, explosive growth (we can hope!), interconnectedness, freedom…probably not all at once!

Thanking you designers in advance!