Some years ago, after I was given the original high-resolution images related to the WSGF, one thing I did was a crispier export of the logo aimed specifically at the 24x24 pixel size of icons that appear on PCGamingWiki, a platform that is our long-time partner. By that point, I had a record of improving PCGamingWiki's vector icons for its list of stores while I was a staff member there, so it was only natural that I thought of how the infinite scalability of an SVG logo would allow us to make an even better small size icon for PCGamingWiki and other areas.
Not only was our existing logo very dated, being straight from 2007, but the increase in monitor resolutions also worked against it, because there is obviously a limit to how much a 3D style raster logo can scale up. At some point, I added "SVG logo" as one of the tasks of the WSGF development Trello board. Remaking our website in 2024-2025 was a good opportunity to also update the logo, but there were much more important aspects to take care of. My prior remaster-style crop and color tweak to our old logo already used on platforms like Discord looked good enough, so we went with that. Another obstacle was that I didn't have or know the original font used on the old logo, and tracing its lines seemed like too much effort, especially considering that I don't do vector graphics for a living.
Around April Fools' earlier this year, people's memories of DLSS 5 memes were still fresh, so I quickly simplified our logo in a raster editor and added a DLSS 5 caption in the corner. However, that ended up looking so good that it was hardly a funny example of DLSS 5 doing things worse with its removal of detail. In fact, even the WSGF founder Skip said we can use that image as our serious logo. The idea prompted me to look for a font that looks like the original. I found one, but it's only last month, when an old-school member returned to the platform after 11 years of absence and shared photos of the old WSGF merch featuring the old logo, that I thought of how good a flat logo would look on a T-shirt and finally pushed myself to sit down and experiment with creating an SVG logo that's closely aligned to the shapes of the old one while being flat and modern.
At first the new logo was just a circle within a circle, like the previous one, but then I tried out the idea I've had and expressed to the rest of the staff for years: making the inner one into the shape of a gear, in homage to our 2006 logo that had that in it. That way we'd not only match the modern standards of design, but also embrace nostalgia and have an Easter egg referencing the very first years of our platform. The shape also made the logo a bit more unique and was a more meaningful way to represent what we do here, so I stuck with it after testing out a few variants. The community was positive in its reactions to the logo first set on Discord for that very purpose, giving us enough confidence to make the switch.
