Who designed the WikiLeaks logo? According to this Metahaven interview, a designer named Aśka. She created the WikiLeaks hourglass in 2006, and her story is most interesting.
MH: How did the idea for the hourglass emerge?
A: I made the logo in 2006, so it's hard for me to remember what I was thinking about at the time I made it. I'm sure it would have been a completely intuitive response to the brief. I can see from my sketches that it was pretty much one of the first things that came to my mind. I was very interested in the idea of transformation that Julian's website was aiming to achieve.
Changing the world may seem like a romantic notion, but it's also exactly what needs to happen for each new generation to supersede the old. So I guess the hourglass is exactly that—a transformation in time. And the best thing about it is that once the last drop falls, you can turn it around and start again.