BB1987 wrote: * | June 16th, 2017, 8:28 pm |
They both look cool. Is the globe a little touch to PanAm or a wikipedia-ish reference?
Lasting two years the first and three the other those liveries are a quite short-lived. But it is also true that in the 90s and early 00s USAirways and Delta flipped liveries as fast as the USN crammed DDs into service during WWII.
Thanks. The globe is more Wikipedia-based, but does draw inspiration from airlines such as PanAm and Continental/United. The iconic puzzle logo of Wikipedia didn't debut until 2003, and I try to avoid using any obvious copyrighted images, anyway (which is basically a holdover from WikiStates paranoia and may or may not still be justified). The two logos used in 2001 weren't the easiest on the eye, certainly not anything I'd want to put on an airliner:
I decided to go with the W, as glyphs themselves are free, and I wanted something more interesting than a simple circle as the background, hence the globe.
The reason for the rapid change in liveries can be attributed to a new airline trying to figure out its brand identity. The first was hastily thrown together shortly after the official establishment of Wikipedia and Universe, with a more "primitive" logo. The second was a more considered revamp, featuring an overall gray livery introducing the "stripey" fuselage and a thicker cheatline to match, a darker blue with blue engines, and the "Winged W" logo, essentially a "stylized but not quite there yet" theme, if you follow.
The current livery, introduced in 2006 with only minor tweaks since then, is more definitive, integrating colors and patterns from both of the previous liveries into the overall blue scheme you see now. The "W" tail logo did away with the wing effect and oriented the "stripe" effect along the lines of the letter instead of cutting across, enabling the W to be larger. The font was changed from Times New Roman to Hoefler text in the 2006 redesign, then to Linux Libertine in late 2010 (with the "crossed W" preserved in the new style) to complement the redesign of the Wikipedia logo and commemorate the upcoming decennial of both wiki and nation.
I just don't "get" what "Wikipedia and Universe" is - is this a nation, or a company, or some non-profit group based on Wikipedia?
Maybe time for a more creative nation name?
It's a nation. The name is admittedly a holdover from when I was a young newbie. It seems awkward in retrospect, but virtually the entire storyline is designed around it, so I essentially retconned an explanation into its history, complete with fierce debate among the framers over a slew of different options. The name is intended to represent the unity of multiple concepts represented by each word: Wikipedia is freedom and knowledge for all, and Universe emphasizes openness and a connection with the infinite (contrasting with the authoritarianism, restriction of information, isolation from the world, and general backwardness of its predecessor state). Take it as you will.