Snøhetta has teamed up with the Wikimedia Foundation to develop a new visual identity for its global organisation that will be generated in partnership with volunteers from around the world.
The nonprofit organisation that operates Wikipedia asked Norwegian design and architecture firm Snøhetta to help it create a branding system, that supports Wikimedia's stated objective of "setting knowledge free".

Since it launched in 2001, Wikipedia has become the internet's largest public encyclopaedia and is now accessed by more than 1.5 billion devices each month.
The Wikimedia organisation encompasses a range of free knowledge projects, including Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikinews and Wikidata.

The foundation's owners were concerned that the existing Wikimedia name and branding is not known or understood by many people, which is having a negative impact on its potential for expansion. By shifting the focus of the brand onto the much more familiar Wikipedia name, the organisation is hoping to simplify the way it presents its projects and purpose to volunteers, partners and donors.

Wikimedia said it chose to partner with Snøhetta because of its "experience in building everything from libraries to national park identities".
It also pointed to the firm's history of using collaborative methods for generating concepts.
"Snøhetta has a long-standing commitment to developing socially sustainable design solutions that promote a sense of collective o...