New Mozilla logo concepts

https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/now-for-the-fun-part/

48 58 10 years ago

blog.mozilla.org

bobajeff• 10 years ago

Not a single one of them looks better than the one they already have and at least half of them are awful. Besides the name makes way more sense with the dinosaur logo.

forgotpwtomain4• 10 years ago

I entirely concur. I don't see why they think they need a re-branding either. It's more like they need a strategy to compete with chrome. Or at least one successful project other than Firefox.

Sylos5• 10 years ago

That's the thing, though, a huge portion of the success of Chrome is not caused by it being a particularly good browser, but rather by it being bundled with other software or advertised for on the world's most popular webpage.

For Mozilla to be able to compete with that by purely being technologically superior, they'd have to be so ridiculously good that Chrome would look like Internet Explorer 6 in comparison. As long as that's not the case, it's hard to tell people to switch to Firefox, because it still is subjective which the better browser is.

So, they have to do some form of advertising, and a recognizable branding can help with that.

nothis• 10 years ago

What's their current logo? Lowercase "mozilla"? That dinosaur isn't there anymore, is it?

I rather like the Moz://a logo. Beyond geeky, beyond clever. Maybe too clever, I dunno.

raimue• 10 years ago

The :// thing would be too close to the new curl logo, introduced only a few months ago: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2016/05/27/a-new-curl-logo/

Sylos5• 10 years ago

Yeah, lowercase "mozilla" is pretty much their current logo, often in combination with the rounded shape that tabs in Firefox have.

The dinosaur sort of exists still, but it's essentially never used in publicity work and I doubt that anyone outside of tech could recognize it. I mean, it's too generic anyways. No one who doesn't happen to know that that dinosaur is the exact dinosaur that Mozilla uses, will recognize it as logo for Mozilla. They will just think that it's a random dinosaur.

And while I personally like "mozilla" and like it better as any of the designs shown here, I can understand why they want to switch it out. "mozilla" is not terribly recognizable and doesn't pop into the eye. Also takes a lot of space on a poster or similar.

oDot• 10 years ago

True. They should do a modern take of the dinosaur logo

cocotino• 10 years ago

The original logo is nowhere to be found on that page because they don't have the balls to compare it to any of the new ones.

Translation: you better not change it.

thatswrong0• 10 years ago

That yellow logo looks an awful lot like Monsters Inc.

icebraining• 10 years ago

Agreed, and the "merchandising" they designed even has a monster: https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/files/2016/08/jb_Mozilla...

cheiVia0• 10 years ago

Eye of Sauron was what I thought.

yepperino2• 10 years ago

The proposed logos don't look like anything. They either need more proposals or stick with the current logo.

yepperino2• 10 years ago

This guy articulated my thoughts better:

https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/now-for-the-fun-part/#co...

cdibona• 10 years ago

If you look on the mozilla site they've gone to great lengths to remove the dino branding already, which is a shame, as who didn't like the dino guy?

That said, who cares about mozilla's logo? If this was the firefox logo, that'd matter a bit more, but in the end, this is just a bunch of costly big company bs that matters very little.

djsumdog• 10 years ago

Oh wow. Yea, I couldn't find it anywhere on their site. I had to go to their Wikipedia page.

I really like the dino. I remember the early Mozilla releases based on Netscape 6 and how it had the dino-logo in that fading pattern for page loads.

Come to think of it...I totally forgot we lost the page loading icon ages ago. It's a part of the tab icon now. Oh nostalgia:

https://media.giphy.com/media/anjRJ4nv9WJzO/giphy.gif

anc842• 10 years ago

How many thousands of Thunderbird development hours could have been paid with this completely unnecessary nonsense?

kennell• 10 years ago

This. Or any other product for that matter.

I understand that all organisations with a certain size tend to develop some sort of silly politics and bureaucratic workflows. But Mozilla seams to have a awful lot of nonsense going on in the last few years.

isaacaggrey• 10 years ago

Do you really think a desktop mail client is where Mozilla should be investing?

anc842• 10 years ago

Yes! In the name of privacy and control we need to cherish desktop programs. Why should anyone but me know how often I read Lilly's mail from 2009.

askafriend• 10 years ago

I think that's his point. It would have been a better use of their money doing something like that, than something so utterly pointless as this.

And I'd even excuse this exercise in branding if the results were actually good...but alas.

Keep in mind I absolutely value good design and branding. I think it's critical. So I'm not just some curmudgeon who doesn't understand the value of something like this. But if you're going to do a rebrand, you have to understand deeply why you're doing it and do it in a way that's evolutionary. This is way too revolutionary for a foundation that mostly stays in the background and whose brand is held up by the brand of it's products like Firefox moreso than it's own brand.

sangnoir• 10 years ago

Do you really think a desktop mail client is where Mozilla should be investing?

Yes! A thousand times Yes! The first paragraph of Mozilla's mission statement[1] reads "Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent"

Email is still a very important and unsolved part of the internet, but Mozilla has dropped the ball and is instead doubling down on IoT and other peripheral projects. I don't see any other email client or email provider in existance that empowers the individuals the way Mozilla could, which is a crying shame.

1.https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/

usrusr• 10 years ago

Judging by the quality of the contenders, i'd say about three. Hours, not thousands of.

anexprogrammer2• 10 years ago

"There are no duds in the mix"

More like they're all duds. Terrible, unless it was just a student doodling while learning design.

The Moz://a one instantly makes me think there is a new product from Rand Fishkin's Moz.com (formerly seomoz).

bluthru• 10 years ago

It looks like a bunch of amateurs aping trendy styles instead of servicing the Mozilla brand. Harsh language, but I would have never guessed the proposals would be so flippant when opening the link.

woodruffw2• 10 years ago

I didn't even realize that the old dino logo had been phased out until I read this post. I liked that logo a lot - it had a timeless quality to it.

I don't think that any of these replacements are particularly bad (except perhaps for that eye one...), but none seem to really capture the mental image of "Mozilla".

Google designed their logo and branding following the Alphabet transition, but kept the 'G' and color scheme to link users back to the original branding. Mozilla would do well to follow suit.

hughw• 10 years ago

Here's the oldest dino. I wish they could keep an allusion to him, at least: http://www.davetitus.com/mozilla/welcome.jpg

Edit: That's from this interesting history page "How was Mozilla born: The story of the first mascot on the Internet" http://www.davetitus.com/mozilla/

woodruffw2• 10 years ago

I actually had no idea that that green dino (lizard?) was the first Mozilla. I've seen it around the Internet before, but I never made the connection.

Thanks for the link, this looks like a great read! And yes, I think an allusion to either would in in good taste on the part of the Mozilla design team.

ajamesm2• 10 years ago

The sluggish browser, outdated mail client, useless Hello integration, and misguided Pocket bundling have done more to "brand" Mozilla for me than some new vector art.

ffggvv2• 10 years ago

Let's encrypt, Rust/Servo, https://optin.stopwatching.us/ is what mozilla means to me.

Donate https://donate.mozilla.org or contribute some code instead of complaining.

ajamesm2• 10 years ago

My gripes aren't due to a lack of effort, LOC or money, but completely silly product visions.

I have plenty of contributions I could make, but they're all about -50,000 LOC and they won't get merged.

akvadrako• 10 years ago

What? Don't donate to Mozilla - this whole story is about how they are wasting money instead of focusing on what's important. When one donates it should be about doing the most good with their money and unless it's $1M+, it won't make a dent in Mozilla's output.

iopq• 10 years ago

Bring back Mozilla the IE-stomping monster.

mrmondo• 10 years ago

While I personally love Moz://a, I don't think any of these designs will help iconify the message and strengths of the Mozilla Foundation to the general public.

fludlight• 10 years ago

Why do some institutions have a burning need to change their logo every few years?

apricot• 10 years ago

Changing logos is the institutional version of cat waxing.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cat%20waxing

laszlokorte• 10 years ago

After clicking the link it actually took me a few minutes to realize that those graphics I saw were not just some stock images meant to give the blog post some color but that they are the actual proposals for a new mozilla logo...

Well I guess this list [1] needs an update and 7 more logos added...

[1] http://www.boredpanda.com/worst-logo-fails-ever/

oliv__• 10 years ago

    Which of these initial visual expressions best captures what Mozilla means to you? Which will best help us tell our story to a youthful, values-driven audience? Which brings to life the Mozilla personality: Gutsy, Independent, Buoyant, For Good?

I don't know, they're all terrible...

jrcii• 10 years ago

As a professional logo designer for over a decade, the Moz://a is the best, but they're all bad and inferior to the current logo.

forgotpwtomain4• 10 years ago

Old logos for reference since they are not featured in the post:

https://developer.cdn.mozilla.net/static/img/opengraph-logo....

https://takebacktheweb.production.paas.mozilla.community/wp-...

geppetto• 10 years ago

The first one - used in MDN - is modern, beautiful and clearly tied to Mozilla brand and history. I don't get why they don't just use that.

eecks• 10 years ago

They're all really bad in my opinion. Having said that I hated Instagram's recent rebranding but now I love it.

htor• 10 years ago

The Connector looks promising! But those logos doesn't cut the mustard at all.

Maken• 10 years ago

I want the dino back. The combination of the in-joke name and logo gave Mozilla personality. It talked more about them more than any carefully designed and full of pointless metaphors new logo will ever do.

Sylos5• 10 years ago

After reading the explanation for the eye-logo, it's sort of my favorite, as it has the most character and fits Mozilla's message best, in my opinion.

However. When I first saw the logo, I thought of Eye of Sauron, the all-overlooking eye which sees everything you do. And that doesn't represent Mozilla at all.

tmzt• 10 years ago

The last one (flik/flak) might work well with the new browserhtml UX for servo, 3d navigation, breaking away from the traditional forward/back buttons ironically echoed in the "open" design.

See the screenshot/mockup here

https://github.com/browserhtml/browserhtml/blob/master/brows...

As another comment mentioned, why not start with Firefox which has had the same branding since Ian introduced it in a blog post probably over a decade ago.

Simplify the logo to nearly dichromatic, with subtle depth cues.

Beyond that the brand has to be about something, like a faster more open web in the past, and possibly privacy and security should be added now.

Edge seems to be stalling, Chrome is fast but the core (blink) is becoming outdated as is Gecko. ("Next-generation layout" as it was called back when XPCOM was a thing.)

Battery life matters in mobile and that's something that WebRender can improve with the right driver support.

The other opportunity here is privacy, improve the extension API and the network layer to support filters, making Firefox the ad-blocking friendly browser. This woulsd be faster than a SOCKS proxy, avoid the extra copies and context switches.

Talk about the "advanced security" and how the latest standards are supported on all platforms, unlike IE or Chrome.

Consider introducing a new HTML-based UX on the Gecko-based browser along with process isolation and Rust components.

Simplify the UX to match Chrome, but introduce new extension points using web components or the like. Chrome has extensions that can "read any page", Firefox could limit them to pages they are activated on by user action. It should be possible to have extensions that cannot access "chrome" features, such as file IO or socket IO.

Maybe have a specific area in the UX where page actions can be registered, similar to the old CSS stylesheet picker in early versions of Firefox. This would avoid browser toolbars and other things that slow Firefox down over time.

_qbjt• 10 years ago

I will give my thoughts on each of them:

"The Eye" - Right off the bat, obfuscating the brand name like this is a bad idea. Look around on Logopedia [1] for a while and you'll notice that most corporate branding spells the company name out clearly. There's a reason for this. As beautiful as your stylized, geometric typography may look, it takes too long to get the point across. Human perception is variable; state your name loud and proud so all hear it. Further, yellow is a risky color in this case. It is traditionally used to evoke "sunny" feels but is more commonly associated with "caution" on the Internet. I also get this anxious feeling from the Eye of Mordor motif which reminds me of Internet surveillance more than it does freedom.

"The Connector" - I quite like the concept behind this one. One of the aspects of free software that I believe we take for granted is that open collaboration brings people together from all countries and cultures to solve common problems. I think the theme of "unity" is communicated effectively here with a fairly appealing minimalist design. My main criticism is in the geometry of the multicolored logo. The shapes are incongruent in their direction and give the larger logo a chaotic pull.

"Open button" - Once again, I like the concept of bringing people together. Unfortunately, this one just doesn't appeal to my tastes at all. The colors (which do not complement each other) and stroke come together in a very loud logo that not a lot of people are going to associate with "openness" (I'm not sure if that "open" icon is a standard or something the designer conceived of, but I don't recognize it). If I had to pick one word to describe this logo, it would be "garish". Tone it down and tighten it up.

"Protocol" - Nice touch with the `://`. As an alternate logo used in the context of API documentation, technical wikis, etc., I quite like it. However, I'll refer back to the obfuscation argument I made with "The Eye". You really want your corporate branding to convey that brand name as efficiently as possible. Again, eliminate any perceptual barriers to entry. This logo empathizes with English-speaking techies but doesn't necessarily translate well to other markets. If evangelizing free software is part of Mozilla's mission statement, they might find it beneficial to do so outside of the circles already using it. This logo falls short in that regard.

"Wireframe world" - Style without substance. Look at the IBM logo designed by Paul Rand [2]. It's strong and industrial while also having that little touch of personality that tells the story of IBM as a technology company - the scanlines. This visual cue is done so in a way that allows "IBM" to still be easily read at all distance. Compare that to this "Wireframe world" logo. The brand name isn't what is front-and-center here. Instead we get some lousy shape that tries to conveys an "M" and maybe a network? Either way, it's visually and conceptually unclear and not suitable for a corporate logo.

"The Impossible M" - This one's okay. Obviously M.C. Escher inspired, evokes the idea of technology that once seemed impossible. I enjoy what the designer is going for here. Compositionally it's very bold and works at a distance better than maybe any of the other logos. As far as my criticisms go, it looks a little stretched out. Maybe play with the proportions a bit. The colors look like they were rendered by a 1980s CGA graphics card. Try to go for a less saturated palette. I'm also not sold on the "MOZILLA" typography. The capitalization and kerning don't work well, although maybe it's the font itself.

"Flik Flak" - Refer to my comments about "Wireframe world". This is just more geometric trite that doesn't effectively communicate anything about Mozilla. The rotation and size of the type minimizes its role in the branding which is not good. Also not a fan of the colors here - your blue and orange sort of complement each other (would go for a more saturated orange) but the green completely throws it off.

[1] http://logos.wikia.com/wiki/Logopedia

[2] http://qz.com/461040/how-to-design-an-enduring-logo-lessons-...

thiht• 10 years ago

Wow, these are terrible

Yellow/Black one is just Kill Bill's branding. And what kind of message is Sauron's eye in a logo?

Moz:// is interesting but as the :/ emoticone in it, that's everything I can see

I don't even know where to begin with the connector, open button, wireframe and the impossible M, were they designed like 30 years ago?

Flik Flak is ok I guess, but doesn't inspire me much

All in all, I like their current logo, I have no clue why they would change it

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