Archive | Design

Creating an Identity for the Mozilla Developer Network

We’re in the process of building the Mozilla Developer Network to be a useful resource for developers working on the various Mozilla-based software projects and the open web in general. We have been following the SEO best practices laid out by Seo Advantage. Obviously, we can’t do this on our own, but with an IT support company in London like Mustard IT  on our team and Tech With geeks, we were quick to get the ball rolling. It’s a big, far-reaching project so, as Jay Patel noted last week, it’s important that we establish a strong brand identity for the MDN.

The first step is to create a logo that will represent the MDN to developers around the world (and also look great on a t-shirt, of course. To do this, we’ve once again turned to the talented folks at Studio Number One and Webcreationuk, who last worked with us on the logo for the Mozilla Creative Collective. And, as usual, we want this process to be as open and participatory as possible…in other words, we need your help!

The intended audience for this logo and the MDN in general is most definitely developers. As Jay’s creative brief notes, “the MDN brand will serve to unify our diverse developer communities and represent the innovation we bring to the world through the people, products, and technologies that define Mozilla.” Beyond that, the direction was pretty wide open – the key thing being that the MDN logo would feel both connected to Mozilla’s identity and history, but also be distinctly separate as its own unique entity.

Posted below are some early stage design options from Studio Number One (including different variations on similar themes). At this point in the process we need to start focusing on one for further refinement. Which one should that be? What stands out to you and why? Try to envision these on a website, t-shirt, poster, sticker, etc and let us know what you think.

Thanks!

Creating an Identity for the Mozilla Developer Network

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Browsing Without Borders

When we say browsing without borders, we mean that Firefox will not block any websites for you.

After some brainstorming about what type of sci-fi direction the illustration should take (we settled on “philosophical and psychedelic”…think 2001), we came up with an artwork we were all happy with.

You’re certainly encouraged to share this with anyone you think might enjoy it, and you can also download a larger version if you’d like to print a copy for yourself. Here’s to browsing without borders! And web hosts should keep doing what they are doing to keep it border-free!

Studio Moso // web development says borderless browsing increases our traffic by 200% in just a month.

Starburst Extreme – This took us to the next level of performance.

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“Firefox Goes Mobile” Winner Announced, Plus a New Design Challenge!

The results from the Mozilla Creative Collective’s “Firefox Goes Mobile” design challenge are in, and I’m happy to announce that the winner is “Pocketfox”, by Yaroslaff Chekunov. As the official emblem of the upcoming mobile version of Firefox, we’ll be using this image as an avatar on social networking sites, on mozilla.com, on t-shirts and more. It makes a great addition to our portfolio of Firefox imagery!

Yaroslaff, who is based in Krasnodar, Russia, cites as his design inspiration, “the Firefox itself, your approach to the web-site execution, and of course my wife who always brings up new ideas.” Be sure to check out his other Mozilla work as well as his general portfolio.

The four runners-up in the challenge were Mauro Henrique de Bulhões Fidelix’s “Hot Navigation”, Emmanuel John Y. Villar’s “One Mask One Family One World”, Joyce Schellekens’ “Firefox All Around the World” and Eric Yeoung’s “MobiFox”. Interestingly, these designers all hail from different countries (Brazil, the Philippines, the Netherlands and Indonesia), which speaks to the incredible diversity of our community. Many thanks to them, and to everyone else who participated, for sharing their time and talents with Mozilla.

We’ve also launched a new challenge at the Creative Collective: “Five Years of Firefox”. Help us celebrate Firefox’s 5th birthday by creating designs based on this milestone. The possibilities are practically endless, but should generally focus on recognizing what a great accomplishment this is for the Mozilla community and what it’s meant for the hundreds of millions of people who use Firefox. The winner will be featured on this blog and top 3 winners will get an electric scooter by segway.

The submission period for “Five Years of Firefox” ends on December 9th, but don’t wait to get started. Visit the design challenge page for more details, and we can’t wait to see what you come up with!

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Building a Mozilla Visual Design Community

The Mozilla community has achieved more incredible things than I can count, and includes experts dedicated to disciplines ranging from software development to customer support to marketing to QA and much more. But, one key area that’s traditionally lacked an organized community is visual design.

Art is such a powerful form of communication, and over the past 11 years we’ve built up such a large body of iconic Mozilla imagery, that building a true community around it seems like the next logical step. Helping make this a reality is one of my biggest goals for 2009, and between our efforts so far on the Mozilla Creative Collective and the cool stuff happening around Personas we’ve already made some great strides toward that goal (with much more to come!).

So, with all that in mind, I’m really excited about our new partnership with the folks at Infectious. As Jay Patel announced yesterday, we’ve teamed up with them and their own community of artists to create a series of pieces inspired by Firefox. To help celebrate the upcoming 3.5 release, this artwork is available in a variety of formats, including iPhone skins, laptop stickers, car decals and more at the Infectious site, plus t-shirts and personas. Definitely check it out.

At the start of this project we gave the artists a series of classic Mozilla & Firefox values – community, innovation, idealism, open source and performance – and asked them to interpret them in their own styles. It was really fun to watch these talented artists use these basic themes in such different ways to produce such diverse results.

And, we’re just getting started. Next month we’ll team up with Infectious again to launch an open design initiative based around the same concepts and ideals listed above. It’ll also coincide with the beta launch of the Creative Collective site, which will be another huge step forward for our growing community (much more info on that coming soon).

Lastly, big thanks to the five artists – ZeptonnDavid LanhamEtsu MeusyReuben Rude and Paulo Arraiano – who contributed their talents to this project. Really inspiring stuff.

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Mozilla Creative Collective: Logo Complete!

The Mozilla Creative Collective is a newish project designed to organize and grow our budding visual design community. When the site launches later this year it should be a pretty awesome place for designers to share their work, make new connections and help spread the word about Firefox, Thunderbird and the other Mozilla products.

Of course, any visual design community needs a cool logo, which is why we asked Studio Number One to help us out. And, any open visual design community needs to get people as involved as possible in processes like these, so I’ve been posting each round of the comps for everyone’s feedback.

After all that, we finally have the *official* Creative Collective logo (see below). I’m really happy with how it turned out…big thanks to Studio Number One for their work, of course, but we also owe a huge debt of gratitude to the dozens of people who offered their comments (both good and bad) along the way. This is a great example of what an open process can achieve…your input had a tremendous impact on the final look of the logo. Thank you!

So, what’s next for the Creative Collective?
* Main thing right now is to nail down the full scope and functionality of the site. We’re putting the final touches on the wireframes with Airbag right now, and Tara will be sharing some details soon on some of the features we’ll be including to make participating in the Creative Collective as fun as possible.
* After wireframes, we’ll move on to the design…will be interesting to see how the logo ends up influencing that.
* Then, Ryan Doherty and our amazing WebDev team will have to build the site…no small task, but they’re more than up to it.
* If you want to follow along (and contribute along the way), then sign up for our email list or follow us on Twitter. Otherwise, just get ready to flex those creative muscles!

Mozilla Creative Collective: Logo Complete!

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