What image comes to mind when you think of Wiki­Leaks? Some see it as heroic, others as destructive. Either way, the release of formerly classified documents and diplomatic cables over the last six months have helped transform the site and its founder, Julian Assange, into known entities. But while thinking of Apple or Facebook or even the 2008 Obama campaign calls up certain aesthetic associations or shorthand imagery, WikiLeaks mostly brings to mind the image of Assange’s wan face and silver hair. Perhaps, as Daniel van der Velden of the design studio Metahaven argues, WikiLeaks ought to re-evaluate its “visual identity.” “Does it matter what it looks like?” he asked in a talk sponsored by the Graphic Design Museum in the Netherlands. “Maybe it does.”

To pursue this reasoning, I recently spoke with van der Velden and his Metahaven partner and co-founder, Vinca Kruk. They argue that WikiLeaks’s evolving public role means that it now operates in a different “image economy.” That phrase, van der Velden explained, refers to “the set of images and faces, visual impressions, that surround the organization and the values that these stand for.” A Google image search for WikiLeaks, for instance, now calls up not just its logo and pictures of Assange but also images of war, famous politicians, prominent supporters and opponents. “WikiLeaks is becoming this sort of geopolitical player,” he continued, and the visual style it puts forth should reflect as much.

If it sounds as if he’s talking about positioning a brand before a new or an expanding audience, he is. From its founding in 2006, WikiLeaks has been engaged not simply in the distribution of information but also in competition within a marketplace of ideas, reputation, perception. Part of what matters in this competition is WikiLeaks’s image: reckless, arrogant outlaws? Or bold, righteous revolutionaries?

Image Credit... From top: Agence France-Presse — Getty Images; Joe Raedle/Getty Images; Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images; Metahaven.

Van der Velden, who tends toward the latter view, explained that Metahaven’s research approach was to break down WikiLeaks into elements that its visual identity should reflect: its unusual transnational structure; its links to technology; the role of outsiders in contemporary information culture; the tension between its pro-transparency mission and essentially opaque operational style. In conversation, van der Velden and Kruk seem at pains to clarify that they’re not criticizing WikiLeaks’s current logo (a surrealist-tinged hourglass shape, showing a darkened globe dripping into a clearer one) and to underscore that a mere logo is not all they’re talking about. A useful comparison might be the so-called orange revolution in Ukraine, an antigovernment movement whose success had as much to do with skillful deployment of imagery (some of it modeled on corporate branding) as it did with any political ideas, or even the embrace of the color green by Twitter users and others supporting pro-democracy activists in Iran. “That’s what the WikiLeaks brand should have — clear formats for people to show their opinion,” van der Velden says.