Meet the Wikimedian whose casual sketch inspired Wikipedia’s 25th birthday mascot

Through a series of fortunate events, Wikimedian Jonathan Ferreira inspired the mascot for Wikipedia’s 25th birthday. It started as a casual sketch on the train to work and will now be the face of dozens of birthday celebrations and easter eggs. We sat down with Jonathan to talk about his work, not only as a burgeoning mascot creator but also as a Wikimedian and a human in the world. Below is an edited and condensed version of that interview. 

Chris Koerner (Wikimedia Foundation): Hi Jonathan, thanks for agreeing to sit down with me and talk about how this mascot came about and your relationship to the Wikipedia movement. Your name is Jonathan, but your username is BaduFerreira. Is that right?

Jonathan Ferreira (Wikimedian): Yeah! My username is BaduFerreira. I remember I made my Wikipedia account in the middle of a college class, and I was trying to think of a username. I feel like everybody kind of picked a cringy username when they were a kid. So I was like, okay, I need something more adult, something more like a pseudonym. 

I’m not really sure if this is a common thing but for my family, Badu isn’t a surname or a last name, it’s kind of like an ancestral name. In the communities my parents grew up in, that’s what they were known as. It’s kind of like, “Oh, they’re the Badus” or like, “This is the Badu family”.  So “Badu”, along with my last name felt like that was more real, I guess. It’s also cool in that it’s my name, but it’s not my name. 

Chris: Very thoughtful and I totally feel you on the user names you pick when you’re young and you look back on them and go, “Oh why did I go by that name?”.

I heard that you drew this character one day on the train, is that right?

Jonathan: One of my goals for this year was to meet the Wikimedia community more – just because I’ve been editing Wikipedia for so long now. I think it’s been three years and it’s always been a very solitary effort. And I’d always see an inkling of this community behind the scenes; whether in talk pages or in The Signpost or in Diff. I was like, man, I do all this stuff by myself. I feel like I should reach out and actually meet people. So I started going to the Bay Area Wikipedians User Group meetups. At my first meeting, it was the planning session for Wikipedia Day 2025. This year they were like, Oh, we want to do screen printing, posters, and the like. Little memorabilia. They were like, “Oh, can somebody volunteer to draw something? If not we’re going to use the user group logo”. I raised my hand and said, “You know, I draw every so often, I can figure something out”. 

I have a stylus on my phone and a little drawing application and I would take the BART in and out of the city every day to work. Drawing was something to pass the time on my ride. I would do it a little bit and eventually I came across this direction and just kept refining on it. Working on it at home and in my personal time. Also, because at this point I promised I would do something so I was like OK now I actually have to do it!

Chris: How did you end up on the idea of using the globe? 

Jonathan: Initially I wanted the design to convey both the Bay Area and Wikipedia, so I was playing around with two little mascots. I’ve been seeing these logos and designs pop up lately in that 1920s rubber-hose animation style, and I thought, “Oh, those guys are kind of neat.” So I started experimenting with that aesthetic.

I was also trying to think about symbols that felt Bay Area-agnostic. I thought about redwoods, or maybe a seagull, maybe certain buildings, but none of them felt like they really encompassed the entire Bay Area. I didn’t want it to feel too Oakland, too San Jose, or too San Francisco.

Eventually I figured, let me step away from trying to make something Bay Area specific and rather make something Wikipedia specific. I was just playing around with the logo, drawing stuff, and realised I can throw arms and legs on it and it kinda became what it became. 

Chris: Does this character have a name?

Jonathan: People keep asking me but it really doesn’t! I’m trying to think about how I referred to it. I guess I would always call it like “the little mascot” you know. I was sending little design drafts to my girlfriend and I was like, “Hey, what do you think of this little mascot?” Then when people were saying “Baby Globe” I was like ok, that’s cool. I never envisioned a name, but it’s cool that a name came up and kind of stuck.

Chris: “Baby Globe” is kind of what it became. You talked a little about the iterative process in doing this and how it evolved. How do you feel about it now? Does it represent something different after all this attention?

Jonathan: That’s an interesting question because when I initially drew it I didn’t really intend for it to represent anything. I drew it as a, “Hey, we’re having this event and we’re going to be screen printing shirts. What would go on a t-shirt?” I never really intended it to represent much of anything, but it is cool that the idea of sharing something under a free and open license is that you can take it and adapt and iterate on it. So it’s cool that something that I’ve drawn without the express purpose of it representing something is evolving into something new. It’s taken a life of its own and I think that’s cool. You never know what the end result of something you do might be, right? I figured that I want to get involved in the community so let me draw something. We can screen print it and I never imagined that it would grow to the extent that it has.

Chris: I’m really excited to see how, when we get this out in front of the movement more, people will adapt and use it. You’re going to see something where somebody in another country is going to put on a birthday party and have one there. I don’t want to get your hopes up too much, but I think it’s going to be really exciting.

So you were drawing this on a phone?

Jonathan: I did. Yeah, so let me pull out my phone. (Jonathan shows the phone to Chris)

Chris: It has a little stylus. Very handy, okay.

Jonathan: And I would just like, doodle on my phone. I have my earbuds in and 15 or 20 minute commute. I reached a point where I wanted to clean it up a little. So then I imported it into Inkscape and converted it into an SVG and played around with it a little. 

Chris: Do you have a background in design and art? Inkscape is kind of a niche application, like not a common program, you know?

Jonathan: No! 

I’ve always been very, what’s the right way to phrase it? Very online. Growing up in the 2000s, since the early 2010s, I feel like most of the people my age who are really on the internet then, we were on an older internet. So something a little less refined, something a little rougher around the edges. I have that sense of like, what is a file format and how is that manipulatable? I guess that has branched off in one part of my life into engineering and another part of my life into drawing. You know, finding freely accessible stuff that’s hidden behind all these different websites. It’s like, again, one of those things where I never had imagined that spending so much time on my family computer as a kid would give me these technical skills. Now it’s like, “Oh, I want to draw something. Let me do it on my phone, import it onto the computer and play around with it”. It’s something you don’t really think of as a skill. It feels kind of fundamental. 

Chris: That’s amazing. So by day, are you an engineer? Is that what I’m understanding?

Jonathan: Yeah, so I’m a radio frequency engineer. Yeah, I’m relatively green. I work at a tech company.

Chris: I’ve met lots of different engineers, mechanical engineers, computer engineers, but never a radio frequency engineer!

Jonathan: Yeah, it’s a subset of electrical engineering. So it’s a specialization.

Chris: What’s it feel like as a creator of something – you said it’s kind of going beyond what you intended – to see it on things like t-shirts?

Jonathan: Yeah, no, I mean – it’s really exciting. It’s cool that you can just spend a little bit of time here and there on something you think is cool, and then it could end up becoming so much more than what you initially envisioned. Like, with this design, with something I drew for a Wikipedia picnic we had over the summer, people were putting that on t-shirts and tote bags, and someone even screen-printed it on the side of their jacket. And that was super cool. I was literally asking people, like, “Oh my god, can I take a photo of that on you?”. 

Chris: Baby Globe is also going to be included in the Birthday mode special feature we’re working on with various communities. That’s something new for us. What do you think about this idea and how Baby Globe will show up on various projects?

Jonathan: The thought of that is really cool to have that much impact. I had no intention for this thing to become as big as it has. It’s kind of cool that I just drew this thing and now it could be seen by people across the world. It really hammered home the point that if you kind of do the things you enjoy or put yourself in environments that you want to be in; ultimately you never really know, but good things can come out of it. It’s cool to see the dividends of something you…what’s the right way to phrase this? You know what I’m getting at, right? It’s like, you do something that you’re interested in and it’s not for the outcome, but just for doing that thing. It’s cool that there is an outcome, but that’s not the point. 

Chris: One of the places Baby Globe will appear as part of the special feature is on the wikipedia.org portal page. While Wikipedia sees billions of views, this portal still sees millions of views a month. 

Jonathan: I think that’s really cool and very exciting. I guess one reason –  to go on a tangent – I feel like everybody has this fear of, “What am I doing? What’s the meaning of this? What’s the point? Will people remember this?” One reason I really like Wikipedia is that when I write something on Wikipedia and I can see it’s there, I see that it gets translated into other languages, and it gets pointed to by other people. It’s cool to think, “Oh this little thing that I did is having this impact and it’s sticking around”.

Chris: Definitely. I think that’s why a lot of folks contribute to the Wikimedia movement – whether that is uploading photos, contributing code, writing articles, or improving articles. For many people I think it comes from that same sort of place. Of making something bigger than myself. 

That actually segues into another question I have for you. How did you get involved in the Wikimedia movement? (jokingly) Were you a vandal? How did you start?

Jonathan: I remember – I would’ve been like 14 or 15 I think – I discovered like, “Oh my God you could edit Wikipedia!”. Then a friend and I threw a little emoji on a page and we were refreshing it and were like, “Ha, ha it’s still there!”. Then we refresh the page again and it disappears. I was like, “Wait, what the heck? I thought it was there!”

Then about eight, ten, years passed and then I’m in college and I had this re-realization that you can edit Wikipedia in a productive way. I think my initial edits were little punctuation things or clarification things. Or small comments on talk pages. I then realized I can contribute in a more personally meaningful way. There’s like a lot of topics that I was personally interested in, but didn’t see represented on Wikipedia. Not because they weren’t notable, but just because nobody had taken the time to write about them. I enjoy writing and reading and learning things, so I could take this personal interest of mine and hook it into Wikipedia.

Chris: Are there any particular topics or articles you like to work on? 

Jonathan: So I really like Brazilian history. I do a lot of reading and writing about colonial Brazilian history. In my work on Wikipedia, I’ll find these little pet projects in that area. 

Chris: What advice would you give to somebody who’s new to all of this? 

Jonathan: I think the one thing, at least for me, that’s had the biggest impact, is that if you’re following something you’re personally interested in, things will naturally come from it. I feel like sometimes people try to fit themselves into a mold or follow some path that looks really good on paper, and maybe it works great for someone else, but that doesn’t mean it’ll work for you. And it’s not because you’re not good enough or whatever, it’s just that you might not be drawn to that thing, or your skills might not align.

I don’t expect everybody in the Wikimedia movement to like, write articles or sort through categories. I feel that the benefit of having so many people behind it is that somebody’s bound to have some passion or interest in something that needs to be done. 

I think all interests are valid as long as you’re doing something you enjoy and you think is beneficial, I think that’s the right way to go about things. 

Chris: I think that what you said would be very encouraging for folks. Does your family know about all this? With the globe mascot, that you edit Wikipedia and everything?

Jonathan: No. I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about telling them, but I think when stuff starts coming out, yeah, I’ll send them a link or two. There’s so much happening day-to-day and I don’t want to be like, “Oh this happened or that happened. I’m reading this book right now, etc.” There’s so much background noise so I’l send them the big things. Like, “I got this project at work” or, “By the way, this thing I drew is now part of Wikipedia. Oh, you don’t know what Wikipedia is? Let me tell you.” 

Chris: What is something fun that you would like to see this character on? It could be anything you want or think people would enjoy. 

Jonathan: Oh, okay. Another personal pet project of mine that I’ve been trying to do is to make posters. So when I initially drew this stuff, it’s all for screen printing, right? Tote bags and shirts and stuff. But San Francisco has a big like flyering culture. You’ll walk past signposts and there’ll be all these flyers for all these things. This inspired me to make a flyer, but I’ve never made one before. I’d been working on little sketches and stuff to come up with a few flyers for our monthly meetups. So, it could be cool to see the little mascot on a flyer. That’s one thing that comes to mind. 

Chris: Like where there’s a wall setup around a construction site, along the sidewalk, just covered in flyers? Or an old telephone pole?

Jonathan: Yeah, you’d see this band, or ad for a reading app, or a food place. Like all these things and then there’s a little Wikipedia thing as part of the mosaic. 

Chris: Love it! Thank you Jonathan, you were wonderful to interview. I appreciate your patience with all my questions. 

Jonathan: Well, thank you for the interview and taking the time again.

Chris: Take care of yourself. Go get some lunch. See you later.

Note: In collaboration with Makeship, a platform that creates limited-edition collectibles and merch, cuddly versions of Baby Globe are available for pre-order here from 15 January–12 February (check back for more updates in March). From 16 February, Baby Globe can also be found in a series of playful, visual surprises on several language versions of Wikipedia when readers turn on Birthday mode.