Clubs for Wikipedians
Creating identity for your Wikipedia student group
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The Wikimedia Foundation has developed a highly adaptable and open identity system for Wikipedia student group organizers to effectively communicate their work to peers, colleagues, and potential participants. This identity system borrows from the successful Wikipedia 10 identity system and the Wikipedia Education program system created for the Wikimedia Foundation and its community by design strategist David Peters of Exbrook. These open design systems provide inspiration, templates, and resources to create your own highly customizable identity for your club.
On this page we present a draft identity creation guide, pre-made examples of the system, and some direction to high-quality icons, symbols, and other media to build your own systems. We encourage you to add your own designs and source icons to Wikimedia Commons, and to link them to the Clubs for Wikipedians design gallery.
Why propose an identity system?
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We've heard from Wikimedians (particularly groups of students looking to form on-campus Wikipedia associations) that communicating affiliation between the group and Wikipedia can be challenging. Student groups or other casual affiliation clubs don't necessarily want to organize at a level where they officially represent the Foundation or the projects (as a Wikimedia chapter) but they want to be clearly understood as being enthusiasts and supporters of the project in their area.
This system helps groups build a simple, easy to understand identity system that clearly communicates the activities and inspiration of the group and also closely aligns the group with the relevant educational institution or organization where the group meets. It's a system that can also translate into other languages easily, and it relies on symbols and icons - a fun and easy way to develop visual communications.
How does it work?
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The system uses a simple organization of text, boxes, and freely-reusable symbols to create a highly adaptable signage system for your group. The graphics can be built easily using opensource design tools like Scribus or any other graphic design package. You could even use a simple word processor and export the designs to a graphic file.
The designed marks and logos can be used for many different situations:
- Way-finding signage for your group or group event.
- Use the identity system to add graphical elements to your Wikipedia:meetup pages or organization pages on the Outreach Wiki.
- Business cards, letterhead, posters or other printed materials.
- Graphical tools for social media: Facebook group pages, twitter or identi.ca icons or pages, blogs or Wiki pages
- Printed merchandise: T-shirts, badges, buttons or pins
Where to find icons and materials
[edit]- The Noun Project is a huge repository of freely reusable, vector-based icons in hundreds of subject areas. Almost all the works are available under a CC BY SA 3.0 license.
- Wikimedia Commons
- Commons has thousands of freely reusable icons and multi-lingual symbols and shapes.
- Photos or pictographs
- Take your own photographs of symbols or shapes, or use hand-drawn illustrations to make your identity unique. Upload your icons or illustrations to Commons to share with others.
Example icons
[edit]Find images and icons for your identity on Wikimedia Commons in the Clubs for Wikipedians gallery. Upload your own designs and icons as well.
Samples of identity systems
[edit]Combine icons and basic text layout and naming for your system together to make a simple identity system. Mix and match icons or symbols to change the meaning. Visualize the different spaces where identity lives: signage, Facebook group page, WP meetup space, buttons or merchandise.
Unique icons
[edit]Different platforms require different applications of your identity. The system should help you create shortened versions of your group's name for icons, thumbnails, or other compressed spaces. Where it makes sense, use Wikipedia's naming conventions to express links or page locations in less space.
