Categories: General

Now for the fun part of Mozilla’s logo design.

On our open logo design journey together, we’ve arrived at an inflection point. Today our effort—equal parts open crit, performance art piece, and sociology experiment—takes its logical next step, moving from words to visuals. A roomful of reviewers lean forward in their chairs, ready to weigh in on what we’ve done so far. Or so we hope.

We’re ready. The work with our agency partner, johnson banks, has great breadth and substantial depth for first-round concepts (possibly owing to our rocket-fast timeline). Our initial response to the work has, we hope, helped make it stronger and more nuanced. We’ve jumped off this cliff together, holding hands and bracing for the splash.

Each of the seven concepts we’re sharing today leads with and emphasizes a particular facet of the Mozilla story. From paying homage to our paleotechnic origins to rendering us as part of an ever-expanding digital ecosystem, from highlighting our global community ethos to giving us a lift from the quotidian elevator open button, the concepts express ideas about Mozilla in clever and unexpected ways.

There are no duds in the mix. The hard part will be deciding among them, and this is a good problem to have.

We have our opinions about these paths forward, our early favorites among the field. But for now we’re going to sit quietly and listen to what the voices from the concentric rings of our community—Mozillians, Mozilla fans, designers, technologists, and beyond—have to say in response about them.

Tag, you’re it.

Here’s what we’d like you to do, if you’re up for it. Have a look at the seven options and tell us what you think. To make comments about an individual direction and to see its full system, click on its image below.

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?

If you want to drill down a level, also consider which design idea:

  • Would resonate best around the world?
  • Has the potential to show off modern digital technology?
  • Is most scalable to a variety of Mozilla products, programs, and messages?
  • Would stand the test of time (well…let’s say 5-10 years)?
  • Would make people take notice and rethink Mozilla?

This is how we’ve been evaluating each concept internally over the past week or so. It’s the framework we’ll use as we share the work for qualitative and quantitative feedback from our key audiences.

How you deliver your feedback is up to you: writing comments on the blog, uploading a sketch or a mark-up, shooting a carpool karaoke video….bring it on. We’ll be taking feedback on this phase of work for roughly the next two weeks.

If you’re new to this blog, a few reminders about what we’re not doing. We are not crowdsourcing the final design, nor will there be voting. We are not asking designers to work on spec. We welcome all feedback but make no promise to act on it all (even if such a thing were possible).

From here, we’ll reduce these seven concepts to three, which we’ll refine further based partially on feedback from people like you, partially on what our design instincts tell us, and very much on what we need our brand identity to communicate to the world. These three concepts will go through a round of consumer testing and live critique in mid-September, and we’ll share the results here. We’re on track to have a final direction by the end of September.

We trust that openness will prevail over secrecy and that we’ll all learn something in the end. Thanks for tagging along.

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583 comments on “Now for the fun part of Mozilla’s logo design.”

  1. Luke wrote on

    Protocol is far and wide the best graphical solution here. It’s brilliant.

  2. mpia wrote on

    As a designer i think all of them could be logos of any kind of business. Typography is difficult enough, and none of them is fast recognizable stays in memory. Also i believe that the orange color should remain.

  3. Alex wrote on

    OMG, these are awful. Do not go there. The current logo is good — no need for a symbol, that is so 20 years ago. Need simple, clean type, maybe some color solutions. No crazy “pivots” or “departures” or “realignments” — all of that is garbage. If you want to be cool, as the fans to rate the new crap compared to the old logo. If you want to show attitude, hire an expensive re-brand agency who will give you a jr. designer or two to compile some “ideas” and you will have to hire an illustrator to clean up their sh…ty AI work. Then run with their “solutions” and be proud. People will eventually eat it, and forget the old logo.

    1. Tim Murray wrote on

      Thanks for lending your voice to this effort, Alex. The visual assets we have today consist of the word Mozilla in an undistinguished typeface and a few colors. We lack a complete brand system to communicate in a modern way through social media and other digital, motion, and 3D experiences. We have no icon to represent us in small spaces. That’s part of the purpose of this work. Please respond to clarify if we’ve missed your point. Thanks again ~

      1. Ryan Quinn wrote on

        I disagree.

        The Mozilla font is very recognizable, and it has a warm, friendly character with a bit of an edge. While it is undistinguished, that is part of it’s charm, and it echos the proletariat ethos of Mozilla. Mozilla is about making the web an open and democratic place. “Internet for people, not profit,” remember?

        You have the ‘m’ and the lizard head for icons. Then there is Moz, the Lizard mascot that Mozilla inherited from Netscape.

        apple-touch-icon-180x180.00050c5b754e

  4. Rajpriya wrote on

    I like no 1 but it’s confusing to read the brand name, I also loved the concept of :// but it looks simple and something is missing! I also tried to comeup with a logo where your Firefox browser is a big hit and used colors for dark and Internet!

    image

    image-1

    image-2

  5. Rajpriya wrote on

    I like the no.1 color combo but don’t like the brand name cut its confusing to read, I also like :// logo but it’s a little simple… I tried a few combo hope it helps.

    image-3

    image-4

    image-5

  6. David wrote on

    There is some great creative work going on here. Kudos to your team for stretching themselves and not just taking the safe, refresh approach.

    That said, from these examples it seems very clear to me that your team needs the help of a seasoned brand identity expert. These directions all tend toward a visual-first, trend-centric approach. Strategy seems to be surface deep and I can’t envision any of these existing beyond an annual event or seasonal campaign.

    If I had to choose, the wireframe solution seems the have the greatest potential for longevity and evolution over time. You could really make that work well with the right brand strategy behind it.

  7. Daniel Hulse wrote on

    None of the above. If I had to choose, maybe protocol, although it is very boring and needs a lot of work before it can be seen as professional.

    If you want the concept phase to work properly, maybe generate a few better ideas before bringing them to the community. These suck. Most of them simply would not work for a broad-reaching, tech organization like yours. Maybe for a museum or art gallery, but not a tech organization a third of internet users rely on.

  8. Enrico wrote on

    “The Eye” looks menancing, as it reminds me of Sauron or the Big Brother. That’s most inappropriate for a Mozilla logo.
    “The Connector” logo takes ten full seconds to understand, and it doesn’t look very “Mozillaish” to me.
    “The Open Button” should suggest both an elevator’s “open doors” button and a smiley. As a emoticon, though, the expression looks sad to me. Kind of when someone pretends being happy but it’s not.
    “Protocol” is a concept I like. It immediately reminds you of the Internet, which is good. It’s a bit unpersonal though.
    “Wireframe World” I just don’t like it very much.
    “The Impossible M” has a retrò look which match badly with an IT organization.
    “Flik Flak” is far too complicated to me, I don’t like it very much.

  9. Paul wrote on

    I don’t like any. This is the only re-branding that would make any sense:
    https://wiki.mozilla.org/User:Broccauley/Rebrand_to_Spider

  10. Tessie wrote on

    Being that this is conceptual work, my vote is the “://” concept, but I stress that it needs a lot more work. As it is presented, it lacks personality.

    The other concepts, meanwhile, are trendy at best. Maybe too much personality and not enough tribute to the tech. As presented they have no long lasting potential. These seem to trivialize Mozilla and look at if they were designed to look flashy. “Design for design’s sake” as we designers say. It’s usually not the best direction to take things.

    Wishing the project well!

    1. Tim Murray wrote on

      Thanks for the good wishes, Tessie. How important do you feel paying tribute to the tech is in relation to communicating other aspects of the Mozilla story (like policy and advocacy work, expanding digital literacy and accessibility, and the like). Do you think our identity should lead into one aspect really well or attempt to encompass all of it?

      1. Scull7 wrote on

        Perhaps a combination of the impossible M and m:// would give you an instantly recognizable logo that could encompass all that moz://a (can’t stop typing that!) represents.

  11. Eliott wrote on

    The Impossible M (design route F) is the way to go ! Easily readable, and between old and new shool, with the typo looking “simple” (and old fashioned maybe with the dots that reminds me of industrial printing canvas), but the colors and the numerous (Moebius ring and Eisher’s paints) references to the infinite being refreshingly modern, especially with the colors chosen and the kind of “flat design” twist to it.

  12. John wrote on

    IMO a logo should stand by itself. If the name is needed to identify the company, then the logo doesn’t do its job. Moz://a could be altered to Mozi//a and still achieve its purpose.

    The black block text on yellow gives me a headache – really – and the others seem overly complicated, or “busy”.

  13. yasir baloshi wrote on

    None of them are really good to be consider as starting point.. I think you should consider to start from scracth and gives more basic directions to the guys who like to participate into this process, because right now, I dont see any potential on any of those logos.

  14. Cody wrote on

    All good concepts. But not nearly enough! Please keep them coming!

    1. Tim Murray wrote on

      Thanks for the encouragement, Cody.

  15. Vampireos wrote on

    Mozi//a ( ‘ ‘)/ +1

    1. Tim Murray wrote on

      Thanks for contributing your preference (and in a very Mozilla way), Vampireos.

  16. Sunny Kalsi wrote on

    The evil / sauron eye is easily the most rock-and-roll of the designs. The rest are sensible but strangely nothing says “Mozilla” as well as that eye. If you’re thinking of re-energising the brand, that’s the direction you should take.

    Of course, there are downsides with it. The yellow makes it seem more like the sauron “all-seeing” surveillance eye, but it’s also the easiest way to communicate the 60s japan-pop feel the logo is going for. However, on the one hand it’s great because it builds awareness of the problem, and on the other hand I feel like a minor colour change could fix the issue.

    Don’t give up on the M()zilla!

    1. Tim Murray wrote on

      Thanks for the sixties Japan-pop reference, Sunny. By “problem” are you referring to privacy and surveillance? Appreciate you adding your voice to this conversation and for your thoughts on The Eye.

  17. Kevin wrote on

    I quite like the “Impossible M” logo. Personally I find it to be the best logo here. It’s simple, aesthetically pleasing, and it’s memorable. It has meaning but it isn’t as overt as several of the others: most people looking at your logo aren’t going to be contemplating its meaning.

  18. MadCatX wrote on

    Well, I have to say right away that I like none of the concepts, some are bad, others are worse. If I had to say something about each of them, it’d probably be this:

    The Eye: I’m uncertain how the eye connects to anything that Mozilla does, in some of its incarnations if looks dangerously close to Opera’s “O”. As was already pointer out, is the All Seeing Eye a good logo for an Internet-oriented company at times when Internet privacy and security are one of the hottest topics?

    The Connector: I’ll admit that the logo looks fresh and lively, but the overall arrangement and color choice suggests something I’d expect to find on the doors of a kids toys store.

    Open Button: The color choice is terrible and the overall feel is sort if “artificial”; it seems to be screaming “Hey, I was designed to be a logo of a company” at me. Also, am I the only one who finds it kind of… suggestive?

    Protocol: This one is the one I find the most tolerable. On the other hand it looks kind of uninspired and sterile.

    Wireframe world: I’m uncertain what to say about this one except that it just doesn’t work for me. I’m sorry that I can’t be more constructive about this one.

    The Impossible M: I consider this to be the worst one. The color palette evokes Pinball Dreams with incorrectly chosen video adapter. It also has the kind of 1980’s feel to it. It’d be cool if you were aiming for retro, but that’s not your goal here, right?

    Flik Flak: I happen to kind of like this one. At least there is some originality to it. The full “Mozilla” tower is probably too big and complicated, but the simpler “Moz” is pretty fun. Plus it looks a bit like a stood-up cobra:)

    To put this in a bit of perspective, all of the fictional companies featured in the “Silicon Valley” TV series have much better artwork than anything I can find here and that is something that only needs to be shown for a few seconds on a screen every now and then. I’m sorry to everyone who worked on this but unfortunately that’s how I feel about it…

  19. Dan wrote on

    Simplify it as Moz. (Moz://a).

  20. Joe Lackner wrote on

    I like the moz://a concept, but not the execution. Take the idea and push it through new variations.

    The first one (the eye) is amazing, but the negative connotations with the eye and online privacy should be avoided.

  21. Marcos Ortiz wrote on

    By far, my personal favorite is Moz://a. It allows you to play almost with everything you are working on. Great work, by the way.

  22. Ryan Quinn wrote on

    These are all awful, and they look dated now.

    The current branding is awesome. It’s clean, it has character, and it’s adaptable.

    The Eye is the absolute worst of the worst. I get it. It’s a reptile eye, but it also looks like the Eye Sauron and a vagina.

    You’re going to have to explain the Open Button, and that’s not a good thing. It’s not obvious what it is or what it represents. Neither of those colors have been part of the Mozilla family, and they are ugly. This would be good for an Internet of Things company, but not Mozilla.

    The Impossible M looks like the Marvel Technologies logo, and the typeface is uninspired. Just stop with the San Serif fonts for logos. They are sterile and uninteresting.

    Flik Flak is really complicated. It’s arty and interesting, but as a brand it would be good for a museum. 6 different colors?

    I like the Mozilla in Wireframe World, but the wireframe figure is dated. This would have been cool for a 3D printer company in 2014.

    Protocol is geeky, and I like it for development sites. For a general brand, it’s clever and people won’t get it. Don’t be clever.

    The Connector is the best of the worst. Welcome to the Mid-90s, and it’s really hard to read. Initially, I had no idea what was going on with it. Once again, it’s really arty, and not a great corporate logo.

    Kudos for not picking a generic colored box, but these could be better.

  23. AppleJack wrote on

    I think all of these are amateurish and ghastly. The color schemes are horrible, too.

    Unfortunately, I don’t have much by the way of suggestions. I’ve always liked Firefox’s logo for the most part and, I like Thunderbird’s even more. Why not stick to the classic open source logo style like Tux, Beastie, GNU, Python, Go, etc? Just keep the Dino. It’s fun!

    Mozilla’s excellent reputation negates the need for re-branding. Just keep up the good work.

  24. Chris Sawyer wrote on

    I’ve got to concur with most everyone else. You should not be trying to brand the word Mozilla. Stick to a readable typeface with a simple logo off to the side. As it is, these are just hard to read and don’t match with how I see Mozilla as a modern tech company. The eye and power button are decent technically, but don’t match the mission statement. I honestly think that you should start over with the intent of getting a simple 2d, textureless shape style logo. Maybe something incorporating the globe?

  25. Jim O. wrote on

    After sitting with these for a little while, I think the 2 concepts that have the most potential are The Connector and The Impossible M. The Connector, because of its expansiveness and flexibility. The Impossible M, because of its strength as a cohesive mark.

    The Connector feels like it’s the building blocks for a whole visual language, and it gives me the sense of many different pieces working together. That feels like it has some nice parallels with Mozilla’s mission.

    The Impossible M, visually, feels like it has a ton of unrealized potential that needs to be explored. I could see a lot of different takes on the colors and shapes that make up the M, even potentially breaking those shapes apart in a way that brings the visual style a bit closer to The Connector. For a single indelible mark, The Eye, Protocol, and The Impossible M are the best candidates. The Eye is too creepy for me, and Protocol feels stuck in the past and tied to a bit of internet arcana that – while clever and recognizable to many people – seems limiting.

    Both The Connector and The Impossible M could benefit from a lot of refinement (which I know is coming). The most glaring execution issues, to me, pertain to the wordmark that goes with each one. The word “Mozilla” needs to not feel stuck-on or like an afterthought, but like an integral component. Some low-hanging fruit as far as bringing the wordmark in line with the logo mark: for The Connector, using a typeface that picks up on the roundedness of the other shapes. For both, using a typeface whose ‘M’ slants outward on the sides – even if not in as extreme a way as the ‘M’ shapes do in both logos – rather than an ‘M’ with straight-up-and-down side strokes.

    A last word on The Impossible M: I get that part of its ‘backstory’ comes from vibrance, creativity and diversity, which are all great things to connote. But I think it’s a bit hamstrung by its retro vibe. In an age when we no longer need to be so concerned about viability for printing processes (color separations, moiré dot patterns), the dots feel like an unneeded throwback. I would encourage everyone (especially the designers!) to look beyond this specific visual style, and judge the concept based on the underlying shape of the mark.

    Just my 2 cents. (OK, maybe that was more like 20 cents.)

  26. Sam Stuewe wrote on

    I am in the same camp as Aki and Justin.

    It is going to be extremely difficult to separate The Eye from the feeling of surveillance.

    And, several other people here have mentioned that they felt these designs could easily be exported to essentially any company or organization. To be clear, that is almost already the case. Cf. the new curl logo: .

    I have been a long-time user of Firefox (been using it almost continuously since I first started using the Web really). In recent years, my confidence has been shaken by various choices that Mozilla has made (each of which seemed to be taken because Mozilla had forgotten its purpose). All of the designs above do nothing but underscore that aimlessness that shook my confidence in the first place.

    If given the choice, I would scratch the rebrand effort wholesale until Mozilla has figured out what direction it should be headed in, and then a rebrand can be used to emphasize the new mission statement.

    For the sake of completeness, I would like to include what I think Mozilla’s renewed mission should be:

    1. Freedom (or, perhaps Liberty depending on how rigidly you separate the two concepts)
    2. Diversity (or, perhaps Inclusivity or Openness; consisting of people of many different backgrounds means nothing unless everyone is welcome)
    3. Community (yes, this is separate from 2. Mozilla has always thrived because of the community that surrounded it; from its contributors and from those who believed in its goal)

    In thinking about the above goals, the attached images are the thought-process I went through arriving at what I feel could be a decent concept (note: I am rather obviously not a graphic designer; but they’re meant to be concepts, not finished designs).

    At first, I immediately thought of a Venn Diagram between Liberty and Diversity where the overlapping center would be Mozilla.

    While simple, I do not believe it adequately captured Openness as a guiding principle. So, I dropped the old Meta-Bold “m” and opened the bottom of the Venn Diagram (leaving an “M” in the overall shape).

    Progress, but I still think that Community is an important part of Mozilla and should be reflected here. So I wanted to add some bounding to the concept. At first, I thought of parenthesis which could look/feel like arms enveloping the “M”. But, with the Venn being a part of the logo, parentheses seemed to just add line noise. Another large part of what makes Mozilla (or, what I believe should make Mozilla, anyway) is the web. And, in accordance with the RFC for URIs, there are only two things which you should use to surround a URL: whitespace and . seemed perfect. For the sake of style, I opted for ⟨⟩ rather than only because Linux Libertine has rather beautiful glyphs for them and they meld in well.

    I should also mention that, if there were to be a fourth Guiding Principle I think Mozilla should endorse, it would be Revolution, and I do not believe the concept I offer here does anything to evoke the revolutionary spark that I would like to see.

    While these designs are offered freely and without restriction (consider them Public Domain or CC0), I would prefer Mozilla did not use them without first seriously reevaluating its goals and mission.

    1. Sam Stuewe wrote on

      Seems that my images did not get attached, though I do not know why. So I have uploaded them elsewhere:

      https://ptpb.pw/ssJl.png

      https://ptpb.pw/mklJ.png

      https://ptpb.pw/ZP79.png

  27. rodrigob wrote on

    Where do we get to vote ? On the comments ? I would go for “The Connector”,

    The eye is plain out scary (it screams “invasion of privacy” and “sauron”).

    Open button, The Impossible, Wireframe world appear straight out ugly to me
    Flik Flak is underadable, and I suspect will print/read bad in many formats
    Protocol seems too geeky for me, I believe most people will not understand the :// reference. It is also rather boring visually.

    The Connector has a clear brand identity, is bright, easy to spin-off, and appeals to my visual taste. Although I agree with comments above that it might become outdated when fashion style changes, but logos are not forever. When we get there, Mozilla will update again.

  28. Ben wrote on

    [ T H E E Y E ]
    Love the contrast, but the yellow and black remind me of too many power tool/construction company logos. Very Utilitarian. Playful with the eye but still feels industrial.

    [ T H E C O N N E C T O R ]
    Love the mark when the typeface is attached, but feels too kid friendly and not future friendly. Also reminds me of the London 2012 Olympics logo. The typeface though is beautiful. I DO enjoy the playfulness and colors of this one.

    [ O P E N B U T T O N ]
    This one is awkward to me. The many faces feel visually forced and cold. Not Mozilla.

    [ P R O T O C O L ]
    A little too 1990’s to be future-proof. Doesn’t convey the fun and creativity coming out of Mozilla. Very clever though.

    [ W I R E F R A M E W O R L D ]
    This one is strong and fun. Feels very modern, but with some 1980s influence. For some reason I feel like this logo would be a better fit for a production company or music magazine.

    [ T H E I M P O S S I B L E M ]
    This concept is my favorite. Strong, modern, and potentially timeless. It’s fun, but professional and forward looking. Good structure throughout. Looks great on everything and would be fun to sport on a t-shirt.

    [ F L I K F L A K ]
    Really bums me out. It’s SO busy and reminds me of paper and gardening (for some reason). :P

    I love all the creativity put into these concepts. I am by know means a design authority, but these are just some of my thoughts! :)

  29. Ezhik wrote on

    The URL one looks like the current Rambler logo.
    The circle one looks like a previous Rambler logo.

    I rather like the wireframe one, but it doesn’t really feel like “Mozilla” to me. Are you going to rebrand Firefox and such to go along?

  30. alex wrote on

    I prefer Protocol and The Eye.

  31. Max Exter wrote on

    Every one of these fails the first question I would ask, which is, is the new design better than the old?

    Protocol is the best of the bunch, but contrary to your writeup, they’re all duds. The last thing Mozilla needs right now is to screw up the branding. With any of these you’ll end up with an inferior design and you’ll confuse the general public at the same time.

  32. juan wrote on

    M://

  33. Ethan Queen wrote on

    Keep the logo you already have.
    Changing logos will do nothing for you as a brand.
    I really dislike all of the ideas above. They are just horrible compared to the current logo.
    I’ve no idea why companies think it is a good idea to change a well established, simple logo.
    Every company that I have seen do this, changes the logo to something that pales in comparison to the original. Please don’t follow suite.

  34. N. wrote on

    None of these speak to Mozilla’s brand, and none contribute anything to speak of aesthetically. Erector Set “M” is far and away the strongest treatment, its simplicity an asset to versatility, but is quite bland (still preferrable to garish and/or twee palettes in the others!!!). “://” is lost on most users now that full URLs are rarely displayed, plus is too narrow to speak authentically to your mission anyway.

    Is this to jettison your tarnished reputation now that you caved on DRM? ‘Cause these designs just rub that bland type of corporatist capitulation in everyone’s faces.

    1. jgreenspan wrote on

      Thanks for taking the time to go through the designs and share your thoughts, N.

  35. Maciej Lisiewski wrote on

    1. The eye:
    – not readable, despite being font-based
    – vertical iris caries negative connotations, at least in western culture. that connotation clashes with privacy and freedom championed by Mozilla. Message-wise the worst of the lot
    – heavy and dense – at 1/3 of the size will be a dark blob

    2. The connector:
    – WAT.
    – recommended reading: http://www.elischiff.com/blog/2016/4/12/do-almost-anything

    3. Open Button
    – looks like a generic button you’d find on a washing machine
    – I don’t read this symbol as “open”, it carries no meaning to me

    4. Protocol
    – I love it. It’s so much better than the others it feels like they were included as the obviously bad choice to give an illusion of decision making
    – works with Mozilla mission messaging
    – aestically pleasing
    – lacks technical gotchas alternatives have

    5. Wireframe world
    – lacks meaning

    6. The impossible M
    – feels dated, 80’s Ikea catalogue style
    – the least bad of the ones that are not protocol

    7. Flik Flak
    – double WAT

  36. gazugafan wrote on

    The only designs I would move forward with are the lizard eye and the protocol.

    I like the use of negative space with the lizard eye, and it did not evoke “eye of sauron” or “surveillance” to me–especially with the rest of the design. It has an “against the grain” look going for it, which I think speaks to the brand, but it would still fit in any context. It reminds me of a logo you’d see on a cool tech magazine. The more I look at it, the more I like it.

    The protocol design immediately makes me think of the Internet… like “this company makes the Internet”. It’s simple. I don’t think anyone would have trouble understanding it, and it says something specific immediately. It does not, however, say anything else about the brand. It’s very impersonal seeming.

    The other designs are too abstract or too generic. I hate the “open” logo. It just looks like a generic and meaningless icon. The “connector” logo is okay, but too abstract to read. The flik flak logo is ridiculously abstract, will be unusable in black and white, and is too vertical to fit in common logo locations. The impossible M is bland, but maybe with some work could be better. The wireframe design makes me think of King… which is fine I guess, but it also doesn’t really tell me anything about the Mozilla brand.

    My top choice is the lizard eye design, but like so many others, I wonder if it might make sense to do another round of designs from scratch. Too many of these are non-starters.

  37. Axel Rauschmayer wrote on

    I wish Mozilla used clear, simple language to communicate with your audience. I find marketing language such as Mozilla’s “personality” being “Gutsy, Independent, Buoyant, For Good” off-putting.
    Alas, there is no constructive way of saying this: I don’t like any of the logos. I dislike “Moz://a” the least.
    I say this with lots of love for the company: Mozilla needs to do better. Both w.r.t. your logos and w.r.t. the language with which you communicate.
    The main things I associate with Mozilla are: web, open, education.

  38. Srap wrote on

    I have no idea who came up with these logos, but tell the man to start with the very basics: readability. They might be perceived as geeky or stylish by the one who made it (it is neither), but if it takes more than 0.2 seconds for a visually impaired man or an elderly to recognize it as a text, it has failed.

    Just do what you guys did with the Firefox logo back in 2013: grab the dinosaur, and simplify it to a degree that it can be implemented in pure CSS3 or SVG.

    1. jgreenspan wrote on

      Thanks for your input, Srap, definitely an important point to bear in mind.

  39. Gerardo wrote on

    In my opinion, the best one is Moz://a, the protocol syntax is a nice wink and a recognizable icon for a lot of people that use the web daily.
    I like the ideas behind the rest of logos but it seems that more work is necessary.
    Regarding puzzles, they are funny and geek but I think a logo should be very easy to read and understand for everyone.

  40. Vincent wrote on

    The Eye’s yellow-black color combo is way too crass and doesn’t allow for much variation in color. It also has a certain obscene sexual vibe to it.

    The Connector looks like the London 2012 logo. From the exact outer shape down to the lower-right zig-zag.
    And by now it has been pretty much established internet-knowledge that the London 2012 logo could easily be mistaken for a rendition of the act of cunnilingus.

    Open Button looks like the work of an amateur. A bad one even.

    Protocol isn’t too bad. But googling it would suck.

    Wireframe World looks kinda cool, but also pretty similar to Medium.com and the additional “MOZILLA” type is somewhat awkwardly placed.

    The Impossible M is pretty bad.

    Flik Flak has way too many details for a logo and simply doesn’t work as such.

    I very much like the current “mozilla” brand. Why not just simplify/focus your current branding by getting rid of the dinosaur and all other decorative branding elements? The current “mozilla” is pretty good. Slap some nice foreground/background/accent color variations/themes on it (like, one for each major project/product or so) and you’re good.

  41. Matt wrote on

    Honestly I wouldn’t rate any of them over a 4 out of 10.

    Of the bunch, the :// design is the best, but that’s about like saying that a punch to the gut is better than a punch to the groin, you really don’t want the punch to the gut, but it is better than the punch to the groin.

    I’ve seen it suggested over on Ars-Technica that a new logo that would tie in with the past (and thus transition the brand) is the old Netscape symbol, but updated with an M instead of an N. I’d honestly get behind something like that.

    For these, I’d say the lizard eye is (A) Not really evocational of a lizard eye (more of a cat eye), (B) too evocative of Sauron of LOTR (And thus being spied on), and (C) Horribly 1970’s in color scheme.

    The abstract tribal Mozilla is too busy and too colorful. There’s a reason why most companies don’t have more than 3 colors in a logo (seriously, go look at all the big companies, you won’t find many that use 6 colors in a logo).

    The on button looks too generic, there’s too many items that have an on button. You’re losing your branding with that one, and you may have issues with keeping it as ‘your logo’ if someone copies it due it being so generic.

    The wire frame logo would be decent if you were, say, a 3-D printer company, but as it is, it’s too monotone (the opposite of the tribal issue).

    The abstract unfolding Mozilla has too many colors, and too many facets. I like how the Mozilla is hidden in the design, but you’ll also need that logo to work in monochrome, and I don’t think it will.

    The impossible M is too simpllistic, and looks like it was done in Microsoft Paint. It would be ok for a smart phone icon, but not a company logo. Plus the color scheme screams ‘blah’.

    Finally that leaves us with the Moz;//a, which is the best of a bad lot. It’s cute and geeky, but it’s also going to be confusing to people like my mother who’s 75, and actually computer literate (more so than a lot of people younger than her). If it confuses her, it’s going to absolutely brain stump the average user ‘I use the internet for e-mail and adult entertainment’ crowd. Which unfortunately, are a lot more as a potential customer base for Mozilla than the geeky nerds are.

  42. Henry I wrote on

    Personally, I believe that the second option (“For the Internet of People” – “The Connector”) is the best, and the one that gives you the most flexibility for new designs, colors and patterns.

  43. Charlie Hayes wrote on

    These all look a lot worse than the current mozilla logo. Please leave ‘do nothing’ as a possible outcome of this design exercise; do nothing gets my vote.

    1. jgreenspan wrote on

      Thanks for your input, Charlie. This process has helped us refine our thinking on this project. We’ve embarked on this project because our current brand assets are limiting our presence in contemporary life and don’t communicate Mozilla’s purpose in the world. For more about this you can check out: https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/creative-strategy-on-view/

  44. Andrew Ameden wrote on

    I use Firefox because of the way it works, not the way the logo looks. I detest nearly every version of IE ( I admit to not having tried whatever is the current catastrophe from Mr. Gates, but that is due to all my previous tries being so pleasurable.) I have tried Opera and Chrome and likely several I can’t remember over the years. Other than some advertising scripts on some websites locking FF up and forcing a task kill and restart, nothing “handles” better for me than FF.
    In short, my vote is:
    It isn’t broken; don’t “fix” it.

  45. Olivier Breton wrote on

    Hi Tim,

    I didn’t like any of the logos here as I felt like they failed to capture the essence and legacy of the Mozilla brand. Being a designer, I couldn’t help myself but play around with this and came up with a logo.

    Drawing from the roots of the brand, I went back to the iconic dinosaur head and tried to condense its feeling into a simple, but recognizable shape: to me, the spikes. I felt that the word itself needed a strong, but approachable type so I used a condensed version of Myriad Pro. Finally, the bold RGB red used to color the old dino head seemed like the perfect touch to at once 1) confirm the connection to the brand’s visual legacy, 2) add a pop of color and energy to visually symbolize the trailblazing nature that has always defined Mozilla, and 3) to maintain a connection to the web, by using the classic RGB red.

    Let me know what you think.
    Olivier

    mozilla-logo

    1. SL wrote on

      I really like this one!

  46. Yuri wrote on

    I hate to say it, but they’re all pretty bad. :(
    Moz://a is the easiest on the eyes out of the bunch, but I think the :// would confuse some people.

  47. Stephy Miehle wrote on

    I’d like the “Moz://a” a lot more in a monospace (or mono-esque) typeface. The capital M makes it feel a bit like a Windows file path when abbreviated as M://, though.

    Perhaps lowercase?

    mozilla

    1. Stephy Miehle wrote on

      Eek, that screenshot looks a little fuzzy resized! This uses Input by Font Bureau: http://input.fontbureau.com/

  48. Rory O’Kane wrote on

    1. Eye – I like the readable but stylish letter outlines, and the contrasting whitespace. However, the eye first reminded me of the Eye of Sauron. Only after a few moments did I realize that it was referencing the Mozilla red dinosaur. I like the reference in that context, but I think most people will not know the history of the logo, and the logo will make them think of something evil always watching, like I first did. I like the colors, but having multiple eyeballs in sub-logos just looks weird. Free-floating eyeballs are gross.

    2. Connectors – I found it hard to notice the letters in the square form. It looked at first like a nice-looking but simple “M” on top of some unnecessary random lines. I like the written-out word version more, especially the creative but legible layout of the letters “MoZi”. I find it harder than it should be to interpret the final caret shape as an “A”. I would enjoy the logo more if the “A” at the end were more interesting, by having a big form with interesting interlocking like the first few letters do.

    3. Open Button – The elevator open button look is fine. I was actually kind of disappointed to notice that the logo could be seen as a face as well, because that makes it look more generic – more like a ripoff of LG’s logo. Anyway, I think the bright blue and magenta colors are too garish. Black with magenta would look nicer, if you want to keep magenta because of its resemblance to a mouth’s skin tone. Or perhaps you can make some other pun on an elevator open door that references the web, e.g. a globe or an ethernet port, rather than looking like a person.

    4. Protocol – I don’t like the protocol look. Even after knowing that the “://” is supposed to mean “ill”, I have trouble reading the name as Mozilla – I keep on mentally sounding it out as Moz-a. Also, the M:// shorthand doesn’t make sense – it would translate to “Mill”, which has no relevant meaning. I also don’t like that the use of protocol syntax doesn’t make sense here – Mozilla isn’t a protocol or anything like it, it’s an organization. Finally, the alternating colors put confusing emphasis on “oz a”. If you want multiple colors, I would suggest having “Moz a” be the dark blue and “://” be the light blue.

    5. Wireframe World – My reaction is “meh”. I don’t like that the word “Mozilla” is small in this logo.

    6. Impossible M – It looks aesthetically pleasing enough, but it doesn’t feel especially relevant to Mozilla. The impossible shape isn’t clear enough to be an interesting visual puzzle – you have to look hard to even see that it’s an impossible 3D shape rather than a stylized 2D “M”. On the details page, I wish more of the proposed sub-logos used the dotted gradient, a critical feature of this logo that makes it look good. The current sub-logos have too many bright, flat colors without enough dark blue or white inside to give a break from the intensity.

    7. Flik Flak – The first few times I saw it, it looked like an “M” shape on top of a pile of random junk. Now that I see the rest of Mozilla, it doesn’t look much better. The varied colors and the high contrast between the colors and greys make the whole thing look very cluttered. It might look better with either less-contrasty colors, or only two very contrasting colors. However, when I click through to the detail page, I like the look of the smaller and simpler “MOZ” version a lot more. I would prefer having that be the full logo, and not having a really tall “MOZILLA” version.

  49. Robert wrote on

    Please, please, don’t come up with stuff that looks like it belongs on the abstract wall of a art museum. You must think of the computer users that have never used Mozilla software to entice them to try it out, not run them off. Ugly will surely run everybody off.

  50. Liam wrote on

    These are so bad it’s actually terrifying. Most of all they are not memorable, at least not in any good way. There is a reason T-Rex worked. It was a memorable, a fun, and a great design. And these are a nightmare.

    What ever you do, don’t go with the second one, the tribal one, and don’t go with the last one, it’s not very readable.

    First one at least change the color. Some colors scream warning. Especially if they have the great Eye of Sauron. It screams danger, high levels of radiation, causes impotence.

    The best so far, Protocol and The Impossible M. But boring colors and boring textures.

    Others are way too generic and boring. Especially, Open Button.

    Again, what ever you do don’t use the tribal one, There Connector. It’s the worst thing I’ve seen in a long time. It’s boring, it’s not memorable, it cries “look at us we are multicultural”. Only those that are not multicultural do that crap. Everybody knows Mozilla is a diverse company, no need to use a crappy logo to let others know. Let your actions speak.

    1. leon wrote on

      agreed

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