Branding Mozilla: Towards Firefox 1.0
Back in October of 2003, I wrote an article with a series of criticisms and recommendations for the branding and visual identity of the Mozilla software projects. Partially, I suspect, due to my cheap and somewhat inaccurate use of the “2.0” version in the title of the article, it got quite a bit of attention. There was a Slashdot article about it, with loads of Slashdot-esque replies.
In open source software development, the usual reply to any requests, suggestions, or criticisms is the classic refrain: “Where’s the patch!?” This reply is a (sometimes) polite way of saying, if you don’t like it, fix it. That’s how open source software development works. Therein lies its beauty.
Since the recommendations in my article were not the kind of things that can be fixed with a software patch, I got the graphic design equivalent of a “where’s the patch” response. Bart Decrem from the Mozilla Foundation contacted me and asked if I would be interested in helping out with the branding work (i.e. “where’s the patch!?”). A few months later, I’m the lead of the Mozilla Visual Identity Team.
Our tasks is to improve the quality and consistency of the visual elements of the Mozilla products. Icons/logos, default themes, and other visual aspects of the software are all on our radar.
The team includes two of my co-workers at silverorange, Daniel Burka and Stephen DesRoches as well as other volunteers from a bunch of different time zones. Kevin Gerich and Steven Horlander have done the Mac OS X themes for Firefox and (soon) Thunderbird. They’re also working with Daniel on the default them on other platforms.
Our first major piece of work was to create a new logo and icon set for the Firefox browser, which was newly renamed (formerly Firebird).
Jon Hicks did the illustration of what is now the new Firefox logo and icon. The form was based on an idea by Daniel Burka, and a sketch by Stephen Desroches. Other icons in a similar style will follow for Thunderbird and other appropriate locations.
Jon has made a great post about the design process on his weblog. I stole a few of the graphics from his post — thanks/sorry Jon!
I asked Joh Hicks to help out after having seen the custom icons he did for Camino based on The Great Wave by Katsushika Hokusai. This is possibly the best icon/icon-set I’ve ever seen — it is a work of art. We’re lucky to have Jon working on the visuals with us (thanks Jon!).
Such is the open source world; when a developer looks at something that they don’t like in an application, they fix it (or try). Those of us who are picky about visual and user-interface consistency and polish are looking at the Mozilla applications, and fixing what we don’t like.
There is something truuly significant about the way I was able to go from user and critic, to participant and contributor. I would like to see the same thing in politics and other spheres of life. If you don’t like how something is done, and think you can help improve it, then get involved. Don’t expect someone else to do it.
The Mozilla Visual Identity team is only getting started too. Look for the Mozilla applications, especially Firefox and Thunderbird to get better, slicker, smoother, etc. Thanks to everyone on the team for their great work.
I would be using the new Firebird right now if Mozilla weren't down.
Really love the new artwork.
I'd like to see an 80 x 15 pixel blog button (the current one's 94 x 15 which is unconventional). I did Photoshop one by removing the "Get" so it just says "Firebird". That is not violating any copyrights, is it?
Your work has always been great, and this one's no exception too. Kudos.
Just a question, does this mean that Arvid Axelson's work (i.e. the Qute skin for FF and TB) will be slowly replaced (the icon has already been replaced, in fact)?
if you're missing brandwidth to download it, try here ( french mirror ) :
http://www.clubic.com/t/fiche2711.html
I think the creation of this team may be one of the most important positive developments for the Mozilla project this year.
And, what a coincidence, I list Code Name: Foxfire on Orkut as one of my favorite TV shows ever and lo and behold, Mozilla Firefox ... uncanny ...
The efforts of the Mozilla developers community really needed a presentational refinement to be ready for the prime, and now they have it.
Now, I'm a bit curios about your plans for mail app name: the previous couple, Firebird/Thunderbird, was strongly linked together thanks to the -bird... are you going to thinker about a new name for Thunderbird too, or you'd rather prefer to stick with the current one?
The Firefox logo is good (interesting that the inspiration, seen here, looks so much like the Napster logo).
The 'Take Back the Web' logo is genius.
very nice logo. I am a phd student of biochemistry, but I also have a small "design studio". Since one of my friend is one of Mozilla team in my country (czech republic) I did some illustrations for him (for mozilla). Maybe someone can find it usefull. On my page (sorry but the page is in czech language only) you can download the logo of Mozilla in vector format and a small icon set for Mozilla calendar. The links are as follows:
http://www.biographics.cz/experiments/exp_0001/
http://www.biographics.cz/download/
::.m.art.in.::
Great job!
Will you respond to comments?
I think the new firefox icon is really good and the theme is good here and bad there... So using your artistry, maybe improve theme?
icon pack (i.e. an icon for each type of Firefox window)?
I'd love to see this included at
http://iconpacks.mozdev.org/installation.html
One more question/request. I don't know how common it is,
but on my winME large-font config, the icon in the
window's titlebar and the icon in the desktop toolbar
are both 20x20 px.
Any chance of adding a 20x20 icon to the set, as the
interpolated one looks a bit ragged on a light background.
Cheers,
-LenW
http://members.lycos.nl/mozillafirebird/firefox/firefox.ico ,
which I found through Mozillazine.
Don't know who actually made that file, as I couldn't find
one on an "official" site.
"oh, it's just this cool open-source web-browser based on the engine in mozilla," i replied.
"i dunno what the hell you just said about mozilla or engines or whatever, but that is a really well-done icon, where can i get the program?"
so i pointed them to the site. i was impressed that the illustration and graphic designers both liked it with equal measure..
just wanted to let you know that you had the stamp of approval from some pretty talented students at school here.
regards,
spear
"There is something truuly significant about the way I was able to go from user and critic, to participant and contributor."
I'm involved with the development of the visual identity (inc XHTML/CSS) for www.cacert.org - I too moved from making suggestions to actually implementing changes. We could do with more graphical skills too!
Thanks again for your incredible contributions.
Dr. G
hahaha
I was a fine of your branding article when it first came out. I think you are spot on. The one thing that is worrying me about the new logo and name (it looks beautiful) is that it doesn't mesh currently with Thunderbird. How are you planning to link visually the two? Are the names going to change? Did no one take your suggestion to eventually drop the names and go to Mozilla Browser and Mail?
Answer all that you feel you can. Good work.
-- "its"
"I’m the lead of the Mozilla Visual Idendity Team."
-- "Identity"
I have been using my own version of FireFox with additional search plugins (including sourceforge, amazon, barnes & noble, PubMed, and Wikipedia) with default features (including session only cookies), a default cookper.txt and bookmarks files (perfect for my workplace), and a smaller cache (10MB). This was nice to install in workplace where I do not have to do all the above every time. I used to do that in Mozilla using:
http://www.mozilla.org/unix/customizing.html
http://www.geocities.com/pratiksolanki/
I could not find a document relating to FireFox. The startup page is still annoying me. I still think that users should be prompted to choose a defualt name during the installation when using the "custom" rout.
Now if could just get a site like Burning Edge for Thunderbird, I'd be extatic. With Firefox it's relatively easy to follow the changes/fixes, but with TB we don't have that visibility.
Thus, you would see the FireFox over each continent... or at least Atlantic and Pacific oceans ;-)
Thanks for the great work on Firefox. I tried for ages to get a friend of mine to dump IE for Phoenix and then Firebird, but only with Firefox have I managed to finally convince him. Firefox is just so cool I've placed links on my site to the Firefox download site... On the subject of graphics, I'd have to agree with some of the other posters here: it would be cool to see the fox's face at some point, and I'd definitely go with the idea of the fox beating/out-foxing IE in some way as a graphic, perhaps on the Help>About menu or something... Keep up the good work.
that I'm missing a file called "editor.xul". I did Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Dell, and no one seems to have ever heard of such a file. What happens is that
clicking on a ".doc" file in My Documents brings up
this notice, but no files. Know where I can download
This file??? Hate to bother you with this, but can't find any "official" website for such a request.
Thanks for any help.
Now that the line of birds is broken it seems a litttle bit off to still have two birds in the stack. I think Sunbird must be renamed.
The fox is sniffing up stuff on the net, and fetching pages, that makes sense.
The bird flies in with the mail and stuff... that makes sense.
So, shat could be suitable for a calendar? Something about organizing, or something seasonal? A fish? A lizard? A sqid?
I don't know, but "Sunbird" has to go.....
Thanks for the great logo, very cute!
