Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Wikipedia

The logo of Wikipedia, an Internet-based free multilingual encyclopedia, is an unfinished globe constructed from jigsaw pieces—some pieces are missing at the top—inscribed with glyphs from many different writing systems. As displayed on the web pages of the English-language version of Wikipedia, there is a wordmark "Wikipedia" under the globe, and below that the text "The Free Encyclopedia", in the free open-source Linux Libertine font.

Each piece bears a glyph (letter or character), symbolizing the multilingualism of Wikipedia. They include the Cyrillic letter И (“I”), the Greek letter Ω (Omega), the Korean syllabic block 위 (wi), the Arabic letter و (Waw), the Chinese character 維 (Wéi), the Hindi akshar वि (Wi) at the left, the Bangla borno উ (U) , the Kannada akshara ವಿ (Vi) at the bottom, the Hebrew (and also Yiddish) letter ו (Vav), the Georgian ვ (Vin) and at the uppermost left the Armenian Վ (Vev). As with the Latin letter “W”, these glyphs are in most cases the first glyph of the name “Wikipedia” rendered in that language (for example, 維基大典 in Classical Chinese; similarly the Japanese katakana ウィ makes the sound “wi”).

The empty space at the top represents the (incomplete) nature of the project, and languages yet to be added.
wikipedia's current logo

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