
Nearly there - robin_reala
https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/nearly-there/
======
captainmuon
That flame logo is really weird, but the others are so bad that they make it
look pretty good.

Why don't they test it against the old dinosaur [1] or the star [2]? OK, they
probably already made up their mind and don't want that, but it would be
honest to at least compare. The dinosaur mascot has much more character than
every other option, and at least some brand-recognition (even if people don't
recognize it, when given the name and the picture most people will say, yes
this picture looks like "mozilla").

Another option would be to just drop Mozilla and rebrand as Firefox
foundation...

[1]
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/7/74/Mozilla_Found...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/7/74/Mozilla_Foundation_logo.svg)
[2]
[http://plaza.ufl.edu/darklite/Portfolio/Images/star.png](http://plaza.ufl.edu/darklite/Portfolio/Images/star.png)

~~~
rockdoe
I saw one of the core developers tweeting that he hates dinosaurs because
they're _ancient_ meat eating predators that are _extinct_.

The developers are not the ones running this I'm sure but it gives some idea
as to why.

I disagree. Dinosaurs are cool. Dinosaurs are what we like when we still have
dreams.

~~~
aedron
This is what happens when you over-think things.

~~~
astrodust
"I don't know. Dinosaurs aren't really our target market. Can a T-Rex even use
a mobile phone?"

------
matthewmacleod
It's a shame that the results have come out like this – from a design
perspective, the 'burst' logo is bad. It doesn't scale or scroll well, it's
indistinct in knockout and monochrome, it doesn't stand without the logotype,
and it's far too fussy and detailed.

As ever, public feedback can be challenging to use constructively.

~~~
danielsamuels
Yeah, the scaling is a massive issue for Burst. This is how it looks on that
page for me:
[https://i.imgur.com/nGFGwuU.png](https://i.imgur.com/nGFGwuU.png)

------
moonshinefe
Is it just me, or are these designs terrible and the entire thing reeks of
marketers inventing ways to justify their pay checks? The merchandise photos
alone are cringe-worthy.

~~~
err4nt
If you told me this was student work I would believe you, but its still not
top-marks kind of student work. Its like they have never seen a logo before at
all and instead are making a moodboard about what they hope the future of the
internet should be. Cool art piece, but not a workhorse design you can use as
a brand.

------
chridal
But why does Mozilla really need a new identity? To me their identity feels
really solid and strong. It's been exposed to developers and technically
minded people for years and years, but also to regular users through Firefox.

~~~
melling
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/media/File%3ABrowser_usage_share%2C_2009–2016%2C_StatCounter.svg)

~~~
coldtea
I try Firefox from time to time because I'd really like to be using it. But as
long as it remains less snappy and has worse text rendering than Chrome, while
not offering much else in return, I delete it.

This has nothing to do with "brand identity".

~~~
rockdoe
What? Whenever I try it, Chrome's font rendering is outright atrocious
compared to Firefox...of all the reasons that one might prefer Chrome this has
got to be the worst possible, by miles.

Is it possible you got used to the incorrect rendering or something? How do
Edge and Safari look in comparison to you?

~~~
coldtea
> _What? Whenever I try it, Chrome 's font rendering is outright atrocious
> compared to Firefox..._

First of all, we're talking on the Mac, and with Retina display.

Second, "used to the incorrect rendering"? What's to be used? Firefox
consistently has had not only less smooth font rendering, but also botched
layouts and worse zoom behavior.

(Safari is pretty much close to Chrome. Edge, I don't use).

------
tonitoni
I remember reading about the Mozilla rebranding some months ago in a random
online forum. Someone there made a better logo as a joke:
[http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=214570401&postcou...](http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=214570401&postcount=161)

~~~
gnode
Looks better than any of the choices in the article to me.

------
tempestn
Apparently I'm in the minority preferring the flame logo. I mean, it's not
_great_ , but it's considerably more polished and attractive than any of the
other options IMO. (Not that a re-brand is necessary at all...) The flame
makes sense, and has a subtle tie-in with Firefox. Instead apparently they're
going to go with a geek pun that makes the name difficult to read? And the
majority of people prefer this option?

~~~
emerongi
Yes. The flame has character at least. It definitely needs work, as it looks
weird right now, but the other ones are pretty bad.

~~~
astrodust
It "needs work" like a person hit by a bus, thrown off a cliff, half drowned,
and then during the rescue was accidentally set on fire needs medical
attention.

------
smhg
As a webdeveloper I see some news about Mozilla now and then:

\- new tooling

\- new project launches

\- new git repos

\- evangelism at conferences/meetups

\- a rare article about their funds

My idea based on these sporadic encounters is that they are continuously on
the forefront of innovation. They have their share of strong and important
products/projects/tools, but at the same time they are always in a 'fight' to
stay relevant because things move fast.

Is a visual identity change a good idea in this situation? They seem to have
done fine proving their relevance/freshness with their work over the years.
Isn't this just a distraction?

On the other hand, they have a strong history of design successes too
(personal bias). The Firefox logo and font are so beautiful.

~~~
diminish
As a stubborn Firefox user, and the user many of their products some positive
critics: there are a lot of open source projects which do miracles with less
than 1% of what Mozilla earns each year. I find, Mozilla as an organization to
be slow, inefficient and lagging in innovation.

Mozilla can be more aggressive and productive:

* Being an umbrella for succesful open source consumer software

* Using kickstarter and other funding sites better

* by evangelizing and implementing more browser features in Firefox (HTML5 and beyond). Things like web components or whatever. Caniuse.com is a good place to see that Firefox is a lazy follower of Webkit/Blink leadership.

* Confronting Apple for not letting their rendering engines inside the app store.

* Giving up copying Chrome visual appearance in every new version.

* Focusing obsessively on performance (JS, rendering)

~~~
gcp
_there are a lot of open source projects which do miracles with less than 1%
of what Mozilla earns each year_

There's none maintaining and improving a complete web engine though.

I mean if you could do this on 1% of Mozilla's funds you'd have more Opera's.
That's pre-Blink Opera's, mind you, because even they gave up on it.

~~~
majewsky
> There's none maintaining and improving a complete web engine though.

KDE used to maintain KHTML until a few years ago. I remember using it in
2008-2010 when it was a really solid, feature-complete web engine (even
innovative at some points, e.g. it supported text-shadow long before Gecko).
Then HTML 5 and ES 5 happened, and KHTML couldn't keep up anymore.

I remember when, in 2011, I met the KHTML developer. Singular, not plural.
</storytime>

------
Cenk
Wow, these are all amazingly ugly. Why didn’t they find a graphic designer to
at least prepare _one_ submission that looks good?

~~~
Natanael_L
Supposedly they DID hire some graphics designers...

------
spiderfarmer
This will be a future example of why open source brand identity projects
aren't a thing. You can get better results on 99designs..

~~~
rockdoe
Didn't they commission a professional design house for the proposals?

~~~
spiderfarmer
Haha, apparantly it is, I really wouldn't have guessed:

"Johnson Banks, the London-based brand identity agency, is our partner in this
work."

Compared to the logo's they made before these are really shitty. I guess
that's what you get if you design by committee. It reminds me of this quote:

"A camel is a horse designed by committee"

------
babuskov
Most people don't know or care about ://

However, I'm not sure what the goal is here? Even if you make a logo that the
general public likes, they won't care about Mozilla any more. People care
about Firefox. Firefox is the brand here. If they want more publicity towards
the organization, they should just rename it to "Firefox Foundation" and put
the Mozilla name to history.

~~~
grenoire
Mozilla has such a wide range of brands and products. Renaming it to Firefox
Foundation is simply disgraceful to the organisation and the community.

~~~
kijin
Microsoft changed its logo to match Windows. Doesn't mean it no longer cares
about its other products.

My impression with Mozilla for the last few years has been that their focus
seems to keep wandering around. They invested in some major side-projects
(Persona, Firefox OS) that didn't pan out, all while their best-known product
continued to lose market share. Reaffirming their commitment to Firefox as the
core of their platform, whether with their name or their logo, might actually
help them gain more trust and credibility.

I was momentarily excited with their "Flame" proposal, for no other reason
than that it reminded me of the tail of a certain familiar animal.

~~~
gcp
Mozilla's focus and the core of their platform is the open web. The products
are tools to get there.

Firefox lost the majority of its market-share (and hence, influence of web
standardization) to mobile devices, which _necessitated_ Firefox OS. It was
not a side project. They poured almost everything they had into it and still
failed.

~~~
kijin
Whether they like it or not, the Firefox browser has always been, and still
is, the most visible and widely used Mozilla product. From an outside point of
view, everything else is a side project. Even Firefox OS has the word
"Firefox" in it.

Maybe they should embrace the fact they they are a Firefox organization,
instead of struggling to pivot into a brand that nobody is familiar with.

------
Kiro
"Burst" triggers horrible Moiré patterns when scrolling. Looks really bad.

~~~
robin_reala
Sometimes that can be part of a visual identity:
[http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/48402/what-...](http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/48402/what-
causes-the-effect-in-the-sonos-logo)

~~~
matt4077
Wow, that's actually incredibly smart. Thank you for bringing it to my
attention.

------
allengeorge
I actually thought that "Burst" was fairly generic and...devoid of character
myself (not that I could come up with a better design myself). But I'm
unsurprised that "Protocol" didn't rate highly among consumers - I really
doubt many people even use "[http://"](http://") anymore.

~~~
misterS
> I really doubt many people even use "[http://"](http://") anymore.

I see you haven't used/been forced to use IE in a while :)

~~~
allengeorge
You are correct :)

------
alfiedotwtf
Opera did the whole rebranding-retargetting-identity thing - it changed their
marketing focus from technically people, to people playing volleyball on the
beach who liked applying filters on selfies while drinking wine on a mid-
summers day. It was the start of their sad and slow decline.

~~~
ethana
This reminds me of when Mozilla bough a beach design studio and hired
designers to redesign the Firefox UI. Then nothing of worth of production
value came out of it. Instead we got the dreaded Australis tabs years later.

~~~
alfiedotwtf
Thank you for reminding me.

Again - design for usability, not to look "fresh"

------
zyx321
I'm a little worried about the qualities they want the logo to communicate.

* Unique

* Appealing

* Innovative

* Trustworthy

Sounds good so far.

* Inclusive/Welcoming

Let's just take that at face value. Don't want to get political here.

* Activist

That's getting a little dodgy. I just want a browser, not a social movement.

* Opinionated

Okay... Ask HN: What's the most approachable Firefox fork (or other
alternative)?

~~~
Ianvdl
The politics really get in the way here. I prefer having the "cold", practical
protocol logo instead of the "welcoming" burst that's just some ugly moire.

Seems like everyone just wants to push their activism on me these days.

As for alternatives, Pale Moon maybe? But they're very opinionated as well.

------
kenOfYugen
Mozilla should just adopt the adorable libuv unirex[1][2] along with the
project.

I have been following their identity redesign story from the beginning, and to
be honest, all their designs are very generic and vague. Too complex to be
called minimal, too dull to be called interesting. When polling they should
just include an option like "I would like to see a different design".

1\.
[http://docs.libuv.org/en/v1.x/_static/logo.png](http://docs.libuv.org/en/v1.x/_static/logo.png)
2\. [http://libuv.org/images/libuv-bg.png](http://libuv.org/images/libuv-
bg.png)

~~~
anc84
That horn is incredibly phallic and sexist and the dinosaur looks angry and
scary. Something as frightening and demeaning to women should never ever be
considered.

~~~
buster
On the other hand, the circle around the dinosaur is obviously a boob?

And those teeth.. Women AND men have teeth. Except new borns and very old
people? It's an outrage. It's all about dicks and boobs but i demand a
dinosaur with teeth only on the lower jaw in respect of the elderly and new
born!

~~~
anc84
I was just being overly sarcastic! I love that fierce dino!

------
helly
I am running a popular website. In 2008, Firefox made up for over 80% of my
users. Then Chrome came along, using all cpus and cores of the computer it
runs on. A huge performance advantage. Firefox usage started to decline. Year
after year, they added features, branding, etc. Never addressed the
performance issue. Now Firefox is used by less then 10% of my users. And even
with E10s, Firefox uses only one core for all scripts in all tabs. It even
gets completely clogged up if there is one slow script in some tab.

I would love to know how the roadmap is decided on over at Mozilla.
_Everybody_ I talk to says "Nah, it's slow. I use Chrome". Yet they did never
address it. Why?

~~~
gcp
_And even with E10s, Firefox uses only one core for all scripts in all tabs._

This is "dom.ipc.processCount". My understanding is that it'll be defaulted to
>1 in Nightly soonish. For most people it "just works".

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1207306](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1207306)

 _Yet they did never address it. Why?_

E10s was in the works for several _years_ (while people where whining about
the user-visible stuff, like branding).

~~~
wiredearp
There was an article outlining rollout of "Multi Process Firefox" over on
[https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/08/02/whats-
nex...](https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2016/08/02/whats-next-for-
multi-process-firefox/). My favorite Mozilla art direction will always be the
socialist propaganda branding as seen on
[https://www.google.dk/search?q=mozilla+soviet+propaganda&prm...](https://www.google.dk/search?q=mozilla+soviet+propaganda&prmd=ivsn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjE1NTX2-nPAhWDKJoKHTSIDtAQ_AUIBygB&biw=540&bih=831)

~~~
omnimus
Just detail. its not socialist its soviet propaganda

~~~
wiredearp
Right. That's also what I typed in the search query, but then there was Mao in
the first image and then somone would claim it was in fact communist and not
soviet propaganda after all. I guess that soviet propaganda is the best term
for the graphical ism, but I wonder if there is a better term. It's all quite
awesome.

------
kijin
The "Protocol" design feels a bit too geeky for ordinary people who don't care
what all://_the <symbols> mean, as well as a bit too cheap/amateurish for
people who don't wear college jerseys anymore. Seriously, the Facebook
screenshot looks like a page for a high school football team. Oh, and curl
already played the :// trick with its new logo.

The dinosaur one looks like it was designed in the 90s.

The other two look more modern. Although I'm not a big fan of the "ultra-thin
sans-serif font with random polygons on the side" fad, I could live with it if
it means that more people will consider switching to Firefox.

------
Kenji
I love how much aliasing the star-shaped primary logo mark (Burst) has. As
someone who cares about graphics, it pains me to just look at it. This is not
good logo design in my opinion.

------
coldtea
> _We’re updating our brand identity using Mozilla open source principles, and
> everyone’s invited._

"Brand identity"? I'm already thrown off.

------
return0
Crowd worship is failing again. That flame could be a logo for Firefox , or
the map of a US state. Mozilla should stick to monsters.

------
dbrgn
The "burst" logo has a horrible moiré... It might look good on print, but
definitely not on a screen.

------
thomasahle
It's interesting to see data on how people perceive logos like these.

I like the link between the flame logo and Firefox. It's certainly growing on
me.

The Dino logo seems really playful though. Specially in the art work.

------
axonic
"Burst" reminds me of an Eve Online star chart. Bonus points. To me it
represents linked entities, connections, unity, and the Internet more than the
others. I dig the colors against dark backgrounds too. But...

While typing this on Firefox mobile (just installed to reevaluate), I must use
portrait mode for my keybpard to work, my on-screen nav buttons are not
redrawing because my screen lock activated w/FF up causing a bug to manifest,
and I'm only here on HN because the sites I intended to browse won't load or
perform very poorly, one site linked from an article had a 1 min load time,
and video plays at ~3fps on any site.) After I type this I'm returning to
mobile Chromium, even though I hate Google. I feel like just throwing this
phone at the moment. Some user experience.

Is a logo going to correct this? Same reasons I've evaluated and dismissed FF
for years now.

That, and I am attached to the damn Firefox, they're killing my favorite
software mascot of all time.

Heck, I'm done typing, I get a half second delay every time I backspace and my
on-screen arrows which magically reappeared a second ago are behaving randomly
(i.e., jumping right one word and one space when I hit hit left once.) T9
would have been easier. Off to remove блядь FF... Congrats on like half a logo
design though Moz, I'm sure it will solve your problems, lol. Maybe try not
letting your enemy choose the battles, push for usable and accessible
standards that aren't designed to sell us more middleware and Enterprise
Edition duct tape.

~~~
gcp
_Is a logo going to correct this?_

No. You should file bugs in Bugzilla, in this case with the phone model and
which keyboard (3rd party or not), so we can investigate and fix. It obviously
isn't supposed to behave that way.

 _That, and I am attached to the damn Firefox, they 're killing my favorite
software mascot of all time._

This logo is for Mozilla, not Firefox.

~~~
axonic
A misunderstanding, I thought another article said something about FF getting
a rebrand as part of this. Phew. The Mozilla icon I'm not attached to.

------
pmontra
The problem with Protocol is they'll show themselves to the world as Moz://a
and not how Mozilla. Destruction of the brand. Luckily people never see the
Mozilla brand, only Firefox, so the damage will be limited and the geeks will
know.

My first choice was #3 Burst. My reactions: #1 Horrible and not very readable,
#2 Not so horrible but much less readable and brand damaging, #3 Normal people
could like this, #4 Same as 3 but what's the meaning of that logo?

~~~
wingerlang
#1 - Looks pretty cool, oh wait, is the flame the /logo/? Looks like someones
generic desktop background. First tutorial on Photoshop will give you this.

#2 - I seriously think this looks like someones first or second go at
photoshop/paint. And wit the moire (?) pattern it is straight up repulsive.

#3 - Eh, generic and would exclude anyone who isn't a developer/techie. Not
sure if this matters though, it's not like mozilla is consumer facing anyway.

#4 - Looks kinda neat, until they turned it into a freaking raptor..

------
mirap
How would these design help people? How would it help the community? That's
the main question there. And I see no answer there.

------
cpdean
I find myself siding with the article that I _want_ the protocol logo to win,
but you gotta understand where your biases land if you're going to be critical
of what the consumers picked.

If you want a data-driven decision, you trust the data, not your gut.

Here's the thing though -- they wanted people to get the visual pun in the
typography, but they didn't. That's okay, because a part of a branding
strategy is to educate the public about what your brand means.

You're surveying people on these abstract emotions associated with abstract
shapes and letter headings, but really it's up to the organization to make
itself known for those values. As you do work in the name of Mozilla, you
remind people of the values of the org and the good that it does.

Spirals and fonts don't buy you trust, deeds do.

------
jgord
complete waste of time - even if you do all that, you'll be back next year or
two and do it all again.

------
grenoire
I think Burst is extremely generic, not sure why it's even considered.

------
simonbyrne
Is it just me, or does the flame look like the map of Britain?

------
amelius
The "Burst" design is preferred by their test panel, but they didn't ask if
the design represents actually a clear "identity".

------
omnimus
Lets not forget that big part of what made chrome leader was branding. Even
the idea that chrome is so fast was put into our heads using those expensive
chrome lighting ads.

The bad part is that they shoul just hire someone very good since its the
hardest kind of rebrand. Maybe the comunity should pick the design studio not
do the actual design.

------
desireco42
This is a bad sign, when you think rebranding will help your company find
focus. Since ousting Brendan Eich I kind of am not sure what you really want
to be and do. We as developers and users of fine Firefox browser, really need
those tool to be great. Everything else, in my view is distraction.

------
awesomerobot
I'm a designer, and from my perspective these are all either incredibly
generic or very poorly executed. It's an open exploration though, and they do
admit the need for refinement.

Direction 2 is the strongest in terms of execution, but it's like they googled
"stock developer logo." It's literally something any developer-facing tech
company anywhere could use. Nothing about it is unique to Mozilla.

Direction 1: The crocodile-looking thing seems to be an effort at modernizing
the dinosaur mark, but it's just so bad (the mark without the mouth feels
decent and unique, but once you add the mouth it's like a bad joke).
Stylistically it feels like something HotBot would have done in 1998 down to
the random caPitaL lEttEr treatment.

Design direction 4 is trying to capitalize on a really popular (but now
dwindling) faceted/stained-glass "data" trend... it's already starting to look
dated due to overuse, and on top of that is really poorly executed (blobby
rabbit, anyone?).

Design Direction 3 is mind-numbingly literal, it's like the first idea from a
Sophomore design student. Some of the supporting patterns where the mark is
simplified and abstracted beyond the "M" start to look interesting — but the
main "M" mark is muddled mess. Just look at the all-white example on a poster,
it's almost objectively hideous.

I think their existing lower-case 'mozilla' type treatment is generally
friendly and recognizable and there's nothing wrong with it — this exercise
would be more interesting if they stuck with that and looked into more options
to modernize the T-Rex... I could easily imagine mozilla as a "mascot" heavy
brand in the same vein as Mailchimp (but maybe dialed back a tad in the
cuteness factor).

Addendum: Look at the homepage for their design partner Johnson Banks
([http://johnsonbanks.co.uk/](http://johnsonbanks.co.uk/)), and look at the
shirt in Option 2 — give me a break. You don't even have to go beyond a single
degree of separation to see how generic that concept is.

Addendum 2: Holy shit, look at these other options their agency partner has
explored — these have their own issues and would need a lot of refinement, but
are infinitely more interesting than these posted options:

route B (very '90s and the 'mozilla' treatment is a bit too abstract, but I
think it could be pushed to a really nice place):
[https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/design-route-b-the-
conne...](https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/design-route-b-the-connector/)

route F (combining a few existing trends, but it's eye-catching, fun, and I'd
like to see more of it): [https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/design-route-f-
the-impos...](https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/design-route-f-the-
impossible-m/)

I'm not sure if these options mean that Mozilla doesn't know who they are, or
their agency partner doesn't know who they are — but it really seems like a
brand lost in the woods.

------
Findeton
In the beginning, Firefox was ultra fast. Now it is a slow beast and I am
forced to use Chrome instead. Are they sure they are focusing on the right
things?

~~~
r3bl
Designers and community managers sure as hell are not going to fix Firefox's
speed.

Programmers are surely not going to focus on this.

Mozilla has more than one team. The speed has nothing to do with the logo.

That's like saying: Samsung's new flagship phone is exploding, and they're
focusing on making washing machines?

~~~
dingaling
> That's like saying: Samsung's new flagship phone is exploding, and they're
> focusing on making washing machines?

The difference being that Samsung's repsective divisions are run as self-
funding corporations. The Android development team in their bubble don't have
any financial impact on the shipbuilding folks or the washing-machine QA
teams.

In contrast Mozilla has essentially only one revenue flow, orders of
magnitudes greater than the secondary flows. So every dollar that Mozilla
spends on 'rebranding' or flailing around with The IoT is one dollar less for
paying developers to fix Firefox bugs, or maintain Thunderbird or Persona or
whatever.

~~~
rockdoe
Aside from Firefox itself all the things you mentioned got either canned or
significantly downsized.

Note that Firefox is "owned" by the non-profit Mozilla Foundation which is
using it to generate funding for the things it considers important. Given that
many of those involve activism, improving branding or messaging seems like a
natural investment.

It's like whining that Samsung was spending money on their (then-irrelevant)
SSD division at a time when their hard drives were starting to get pressured
in the market.

------
andrewchambers
This is like knowing how a sausage is made. You don't want to eat the end
result.

~~~
astrodust
This is not how sausage is made. This is how grandpa tries to make a steak out
of hot dogs.

------
conatico
After the demise of Firefox OS, Mozilla is finding it hard to come up with
another useless thing to burn money in.

~~~
crdoconnor
They're in the best position to create an IoT / home server OS that does self-
hosted calendar, email, pocket, facebook clone, baby photos backup, etc.

It's so sad they didn't go down that path and play to their strengths
(openness/open source) and against the weaknesses of the other behemoths and
instead decided to compete with android head on.

There's a dire need for a product like this with a lot of engineering muscle
behind it (and not just because of snowden) just as there was for a real
smartphone OS in 2007 that ordinary people could use.

~~~
omnimus
Completely agree. How do we make it happen?

