Over the past few months, the Brand Studio team within the Wikimedia Foundation communications department has been working on much needed updates to the Movement Brand Guidelines portal on Meta-Wiki. The update included expanding the portal with more information, a fresh look as well as a pilot to provide new do-it-yourself tools using the cloud based design platform, figma.
It all started last October when the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees approved a resolution to advance key areas of global branding while extending the pause of renaming work. One of the new projects the Board of Trustees directed the Brand Studio team to work on was: supporting the movement with updated brand guidelines.
The brand portal on Meta-Wiki is used by affiliates, foundation staff, the press and individuals. Unfortunately over time, the needs of brand users began to outpace the portal’s resources. In February we shared a proposal with the community to replace it with an updated version and continue to apply updates on the portal at least biannually based on community feedback.
Updated content and navigation
The new portal provides the user with seven main sections to navigate: Overview, Logo, Typography, Colours, Imagery, Campaigns and Events, and Create. The logo section, for example, provides information about all the Wikimedia marks, not just the Wikimedia Foundation’s logo.
Our colours have been expanded to include all the Wikimedia colour palettes: The Core palette, (black, white and greyscale) The Legacy palette (our legendary tricolour) and The Creative palette (inspired by the Wikipedia 20 birthday identity). We have also defined our colours with specific values so you can easily implement them in your design and shared colour versions that have been optimised for accessibility.
Updated templates and new do-it-yourself tools
The Create section of the portal provides the user with ready templates on Figma that can be used to create a new logo for an affiliate or a community activity in very short time without any need for experience with design. In addition, the section provides a new presentation template to replace the one we all have been using in events and meetings since 2016.
Last January, we shared the proposed portal, design templates and the new presentation template for feedback. We would like to thank everyone who took the time to review the materials and share their feedback with us through the survey, office hours, the email or Meta-Wiki. We used a big part of the feedback provided to apply rapid changes to the tools before publishing them and we are planning to use more of this feedback during the next round of updates.
Training
Please join us on Tuesday 19 April 2022 at 15:00 UTC (using this link) or Sunday 24 April 2022 at 08:00 UTC (using this link) in a 60 minutes live workshop to walk you through the new tools, how to use them, create designs together and answer any questions you may have about the updates. Recorded summaries of the training will be available to watch later for those who cannot attend the live workshop.
We look forward to hearing more feedback on the updates from across the movement and to see the updates in use by affiliates and individuals.
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