LogoShop Part 6: Wonder Woman

Updating the mark of a cultural icon.

5 min readJul 10, 2019

This is part of a blog series on logo design. Read additional articles on DC Comics, the Justice League, Superman, LexCorp, Nightwing, Green Lantern, the Punisher, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Adidas.

She’s brave. She’s beautiful. And she can kick your ass. Not bad for a 78 year old woman.

(But actually no, she can’t really kick your ass. She’s a fictional character.)

Yes, it’s Wonder Woman. THE feminist icon, who debuted in the Golden Age of comic books in 1941. She underwent dozens of costume changes in the decades that followed, beginning with a star-spangled skirt and a bald eagle on her chest. The first version of her more recognizable “WW” logo finally appeared in 1982, designed by Milton Glaser, who famously created the longest-lasting brand identity for publisher DC Comics.

Many artists would have their own take on the Wonder Woman logo, reshaping it for every new series and adaptation. In 2017, Wonder Woman burst onto the big screen with a look that owed more to ancient Greece than to the American flag. And of course, a new logo with cinematic styling and complexity.

So let’s bring it all together, and create the definitive Wonder Woman logo. Time for some LogoShop.

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Warner Bros. or DC Comics. LogoShop is purely a speculative exercise, refining pop-cultural brands for tomorrow.

The Background

Wonder Woman, also known as Diana, is an Amazonian princess, raised by a race of warrior women on the hidden island of Themyscira. When American pilot Steve Trevor crashed on the island, Diana decided to accompany him back to the United States as an ambassador for her people. In doing so, she wore a costume that resembled the US flag.

With every reboot and re-launch, the details of this story have changed, from Diana’s parentage to why exactly her costume looks like the flag of the US. The most recent telling, shown in 2017’s self-titled film, abandons her traditional look in favor of a costume inspired by the armor of ancient Greece. In this context, her chest insignia is representative of a dove rather than an eagle, drawing on Diana’s association with Aphrodite.

As with Superman, Wonder Woman’s logo became a symbol that, in the context of her story, incidentally resembled her initials. And I guarantee you that that logic has been fed back into the comic book narrative.

The Problem

In recent years, Wonder Woman’s brand has been mired in uncertainty. After Glaser created the “WW” logo, artists have been experimenting with different permutations ever since. Changes to her costume and logo became increasingly frequent and dramatic in the past decade, as the lead-up to, and result of, a major company-wide reboot in 2011.

A bird’s head was added to the Wonder Woman logo as a throwback. She was given a jacket and leggings, with the logo minimized dramatically. Then, the logo returned in a flattened style, cast in silver instead of gold. And on it went.

The past 30 years have been full of changes. See if you can spot the differences.

Thankfully, her first film appearance in 2017 created a look that combined her Greek origins with her comic book history, and in the process, a logo that merged her original eagle insignia with Glaser’s 1982 logo.

Glaser’s logo (left) and the cinematic version (right).

And if something works in the movies, it inevitably finds its way into the comics. So let’s bring those two worlds together.

The Solution

This was a tough one. The driving idea was find a middle ground between the straight-forward Glaser logo, and the more intricate cinematic logo.

I began by taking the basic structure of the movie logo, including the overlapping shapes, and organizing it with more consistent widths and angles. My main focus was in creating the two “W’s” with wing extensions on either side. That was foundational.

I might’ve stopped there, but in the process of researching this article, I realized it was essential to include a bird’s head to the center. It so elegantly referenced Wonder Woman’s earliest incarnations, and justified the inclusion of wings in the logo.

Okay, so she did kick my ass. I take it back.

The challenge was to add the bird’s head without adding a third “W.” So I experimented with several options until I found a version that struck the right balance between the simple and the complex. In the end, I created a logo that distilled the more elaborate cinematic logo to its basic elements, making it more versatile and therefore easier to use across media.