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Creating a New Look for Mozilla.com

By on December 17, 2007 in Design, Mozilla.com, PlanetMozilla

We’ve been working on a Mozilla.com redesign to coincide with the Firefox 3 launch for a few weeks (check out my earlier post for a refresher on project goals and other details), and now have four early-stage design directions to consider. If you’re interested in this sort of thing, definitely take a look at the options and let us know what you think. It wouldn’t really be a Mozilla project without community input, and and your feedback (along with thoughts from Mozilla Japan, Mozilla Europe, etc) will be extremely helpful towards us deciding which direction to pursue.

The key thing to remember as you review is that this is the first step in a long process rather than a vote between four final choices. In other words, these are design directions rather than final designs, so it’s best to consider the overall look & feel rather than focusing on specifics like photography, text, etc. That stuff is mostly placeholder and almost certainly will change before all is said and done.

With that caveat in mind, check out the options and leave a comment below with your thoughts. Thanks!

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Coming Soon To Mozilla.com, Part 1

By on November 19, 2007 in Branding, Design, Mozilla.com, PlanetMozilla

As our engineering and product teams move ever closer to the launch of Firefox 3, the marketing department is focusing on ways we can support the release. One of the biggest projects that we’ll be working on is a complete redesign of Mozilla.com.

Although the current site has served us very well in terms of driving lots of Firefox downloads, we still haven’t successfully used it to tell the story of what makes Mozilla so special. We want the new site to reflect Mozilla’s unique personality…that we’re a public benefit organization that relies on the active support of thousands of worldwide contributors to help keep the Internet open and free. Although readers of this blog surely know these details, this aspect of our brand hasn’t fully been communicated to the broad base of Firefox users.

It’s really a pretty amazing situation when you think about it: this unconventional arrangement has created a web browser that’s not only holding its own against the corporate giants, it’s used regularly by roughly 130 million people. How will we communicate all this? To be honest, I’m not sure yet but am looking forward to figuring it out together.

I should also make it clear that none of the branding stuff will get in the way of making the site extremely usable, accessible and localization-friendly…those are always top priorities. As a bit more background, here’s an excerpt from the project’s creative brief:

Unlike almost all other major tech companies, Mozilla is a people-powered, grassroots organization built by the contributions of community members around the world. The site design absolutely needs to embody our unique, unconventional and extremely un-corporate nature…while still being professional, informative and useful, of course.

The site design should be clean, but not boring; modern, but not tied to any short-term trend. It should be friendly and accessible enough to communicate the details of a high-tech product without feeling cold and technical. It should convey our passion for and faith in the power and potential of the web.

Lastly, it should have a sense of fun and playfulness – we’re serious about what we do but we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

We kicked off this project with an agency a few days ago…I’m planning on sharing some of the early creative direction and mockups as we go for your review and feedback, so stay tuned for much more on this topic.

 

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Mozilla Power

By on October 15, 2007 in Branding, Mozilla, PlanetMozilla

At John Lilly’s request, we’ve created a new “Powered by Mozilla” logo. The idea is that companies that use Mozilla technology as the basis for what they do would proudly display this logo on their sites (or wherever it’s most relevant).

I’m happy about this because I think it will do two good things for our brand: 1) help differentiate Mozilla from Firefox (among the broader audience, there’s still some confusion around this) and 2) further establish us as an organization working on the cutting edge of a lot of cool new technology (again, beyond just being “the Firefox guys”).

Mozilla Power

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A Few Quick Mozilla Store Updates

By on October 11, 2007 in Merchandise, PlanetMozilla

It’s been awhile since I reported on the Mozilla Store, so here are a few updates:

* Probably the most frequent comment we got after relaunching the US-based Store back in August was, “are you going to redo the International Store too, and if so, when?” The short answer is “absolutely yes” and “very soon”. I probably should have done a better job of communicating this at the time, but updating the International Store has been part of the plan all along…work has been proceeding for a few weeks now and we’re hoping to have the International Store live in late October or early November. It’ll have the same design, features and merchandise as the US-based Store, so stay tuned…

* The good thing about the International Store is that Mozilla fans will be able to have their gear shipped to almost any country around the globe. The bad thing is that the world is a big place and shipping costs can get pretty expensive (especially when you factor in duties and taxes in certain places). We’re currently looking into a few grassroots solutions with some local Mozilla communities to combat this. I don’t have anything specific to report on this yet, but wanted everyone to know that we’re actively exploring ways to solve the problem.

* About the US-based Store, we have an opportunity to add a new item of our choosing. We figured this would be a good opportunity to let the community weigh in, so we’re putting five frequently suggested items up for a vote. David Rolnitzky’s blog has more details on this, but the quick summary is that we’ll add the winner to the Store as soon as possible. So, if you have an opinion, click here to vote, or look for this promo next time you’re at the Store homepage:

A Few Quick Mozilla Store Updates

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New Approaches to an Old Challenge

By on October 4, 2007 in Design, firefox, PlanetMozilla

Convincing people to download and begin regularly using an entirely new web browser is a pretty tall task for an online ad, which is why we’re always testing different approaches to see what works.

We recently asked Nobox to come up with concepts for two online ads around the themes of security and customization (key points of differentiation between Firefox and the competition). The ads started running a few days ago…my esteemed colleague David Rolnitzky has a detailed breakdown of the thought process behind them on his new blog, so definitely check that out.

Our main request to Nobox for the security ad was that it be very benefits-focused…in other words, communicate how browser security (or the lack thereof) directly impacts the user, rather than just making a generic statement about what Firefox’s security features are. For the customization one, we asked them to explore some non-technical metaphors (besides the somewhat played-out one of souping up your vehicle) that would help explain what add-ons are and how they can help you.

Nobox processed all that and came back with an interesting approach: cartoons. When they first proposed this I have to admit I was a little uncertain, but they quickly sold me with their specific concepts, which communicated our key points in a very fun and engaging way. I feel like it’s important to be serious about what we do, but also not to take ourselves too seriously, and to me these ads do a good job of doing that. Of course, online advertising provides very well-defined results so the users will have the final say!

The landing page for the security ad is below. You can see the other landing page plus the ads themselves on David’s site.

New Approaches to an Old Challenge

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