Mozilla: A "fox with a flaming tail doesn’t offer enough design tools" for its products.
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Mozilla is “evolving” the Firefox brand, and it wants your feedback
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Speaking as a UX designer, icons are the least important thing in the world to me (especially since they don't localize worth a damn). This kind of visual design refresh usually happens when a c-level see's something shiny and declares from on high that their company must adopt it too.
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Gern Blaanston
Ars Scholae Palatinae
How sad and pathetic that Mozilla is spending more than 0.0000001 seconds thinking about "re-branding" and designing new icons.
Dear Mozilla: Your once great browser is now irrelevant, and it's not because of the icons.
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I don't particularly like either, but at least System 2 is semi-comprehensible. I can't figure out *what* 80% of the icons in System 1 are supposed to be.
Edit: On further reflection, even half of System 2 makes no sense. Which brings us back to the original point: This rebranding is awful. Not sure if it's Moz://a-level bad, but not far...
Edit: On further reflection, even half of System 2 makes no sense. Which brings us back to the original point: This rebranding is awful. Not sure if it's Moz://a-level bad, but not far...
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Why can't they leave it alone? What exactly is the "Masterbrand" icon supposed to represent anyway? Isn't the "masterbrand" Mozilla itself?
I like the current Firefox Focus icon and don't like either of the proposed replacements. System 1 looks too much like Google Photos (and numerous copycat apps) and System 2 doesn't look like a browser at all, much less a Mozilla browser and definitely not a variant of Firefox.
Rating each system on their own merits though System 1 is definitely the more consistent one, the bottom two rows of System 2 don't seem to give any hints they belong to the same family.
I like the current Firefox Focus icon and don't like either of the proposed replacements. System 1 looks too much like Google Photos (and numerous copycat apps) and System 2 doesn't look like a browser at all, much less a Mozilla browser and definitely not a variant of Firefox.
Rating each system on their own merits though System 1 is definitely the more consistent one, the bottom two rows of System 2 don't seem to give any hints they belong to the same family.
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I remember the rather lengthy process of choosing the current icon (well, an earlier iteration of the current icon, as it has undergone several refreshes since), and I was very pleased with the result. As of today, I can't imagine any other icon representing Fx, and certainly not that "foxy" squarish thing (though I think it's a fine icon on its own). If they must do this, I vote for option 2 because the top 4 icons are very reminiscent of that logo.
I frankly don't understand option 1. A whole new "master" icon that has nothing to do with the past, but then 3 icons that are more like the past than all of option 2. I assume top is "Fx" the brand, and the next 3 are Fx the browser?
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Mozilla needs to work out their problems on their own.
getting tired of the Companies reaching out to make consumers feel included in decisions. this fake friendship.
getting tired of the Companies reaching out to make consumers feel included in decisions. this fake friendship.
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Nope, still just nonsense. It's phrased like there's a problem that needs solving, but since "cohesive family of icons" in regards to different products isn't a problem, the explanation is still garbage.
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No joke, I swapped my parents to Firefox over IE ages ago, and to this day they still refer to it as 'Foxfire'.
Meanwhile, I have lived the last several years on 'Foxfire St.', which they refer to as 'Firefox St.' every single time.
Meanwhile, I have lived the last several years on 'Foxfire St.', which they refer to as 'Firefox St.' every single time.
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Curious conclusion, given that the most recent Quantum engine upgrade makes it faster than Chrome and Chrome is actively working to extinguish a free and open internet.
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Well, I disagree wholeheartedly. Depending on who you ask (on PC), Fx still holds greater than 10% marketshare and is in 2nd or 3rd place in terms of share. Considering that number 2/3 is IE, that makes Fx the ONLY OTHER REAL CHOICE for those that don't like Chrome/Chromium. It is the only open-source browser left with any serious marketshare on PC.
Now, It's quite sad to see it struggling to reach more than 10% of PC users, but I'm darn glad it does, as I'm one of them and find it better in so many ways than Chrome. It is a perfectly capable browser, and given that I don't consider any other browser to foot the bill other than Chrome, it's the most relevant PC browser not named Chrome, IMO.
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Firefox is a browser.
Firefox is not a family of products. It is a browser.
Remember how for a few years there Microsoft kept slapping "Windows" and/or "Live" branding on everything? Windows Internet Explorer and Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Search and shit? It was meaningless, it was pointless, and eventually, they had the good sense to quit doing it.
Firefox is not a family of products. It is a browser.
Remember how for a few years there Microsoft kept slapping "Windows" and/or "Live" branding on everything? Windows Internet Explorer and Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Search and shit? It was meaningless, it was pointless, and eventually, they had the good sense to quit doing it.
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Jesus Christ, it's like someone wants to go and change all the fucking road signs from English into Chinese just because... what? It's 2018 and we haven't changed the signs yet this year?
If it improved functionality, I'd be fine with it. But his is all about "style" and "message" and other shit that has everything to do with "image" and nothing to do with functionality.
TBH, I couldn't even begin to imagine what the hell any of those icons were for, and I've used FF almost from the day it came out. If they want to clutter up the landscape with funky, mysterious, unlabeled icons, fine, but don't expect a lot of warm feelings from the user base over it. Even pop-up tool tips on them wouldn't help (it's more wasted time and energy).
Just stick to what you have and stop trying to get all fancy with the spices.
If it improved functionality, I'd be fine with it. But his is all about "style" and "message" and other shit that has everything to do with "image" and nothing to do with functionality.
TBH, I couldn't even begin to imagine what the hell any of those icons were for, and I've used FF almost from the day it came out. If they want to clutter up the landscape with funky, mysterious, unlabeled icons, fine, but don't expect a lot of warm feelings from the user base over it. Even pop-up tool tips on them wouldn't help (it's more wasted time and energy).
Just stick to what you have and stop trying to get all fancy with the spices.
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How Mozilla, how about you work on un-gutting extension functionality instead of this shit nobody cares about? The only reason anybody uses Firefox is because its extensions let you do a lot more than those for Chrome or Edge, or at least they used to. Ever since Firefox 57 it may as well be Chrome with a fox logo.
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Snarky Robot
Ars Legatus Legionis
As I mentioned earlier, my guess for they box with a keyhole is a password manager. A vault with a lock makes sense, from an icon perspective.
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Leaving aside the company's other merits and faults, it would be hard to top Office's icon suite.
Differentiated by unchanging color and letter, with a common design to unify the program suite. Green plus 'X' has meant I'm about to open Excel for almost twenty years.
This is how you do it, Mozilla.
I used to have the same opinion on Office icons, until I started to use MSProject and Visio. For some reason they re-use Excel and Word colours which is prone to errors when starting the software. For the rest, I agree that the concept is efficient.
Concerning Firefox and Mozilla. I welcome the refresh. Removing the blue from the logo will make it more different from Chrome, Safari (and Edge/IE), and keeping the round style makes it a browser icon, so I like the System 2.
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Currently:
Firefox is the primary desktop and mobile browser
Firefox Rocket is a mobile browser targetted towards Indonesia where data allowances are limited
Firefox Focus is a privacy oriented mobile browser (soon to be migrated to quantum)
These are all distinct products, with different code bases and feature sets. Giving them all the same icon would be misleading and confusing. And as noted in the article, other products appear to be coming.
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Why? It performs faster then Chrome, has extensions, etc.
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I'm sure it's just my color blindness but the first bunch look like shit to me. They're basically blurry messes of some color.
Put me down for another "Why mess with what's worked so well" too, though. This constant need to tinker with corporate branding is ridiculous. Who told them they needed to do so? My money's on a consultant who just happened to know a guy ...
Put me down for another "Why mess with what's worked so well" too, though. This constant need to tinker with corporate branding is ridiculous. Who told them they needed to do so? My money's on a consultant who just happened to know a guy ...
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Don't even need to get into Office's estranged cousins for error prone colouring. Outlook taking Word's colour was extremely annoying.
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Flat, unshaded, with no indication that it's a button would be ideal. Or maybe all uppercase text.
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I can understand putting a family of web browsers all under the "Firefox" brand. Where they start calling non-browser programs "Firefox" is where I believe they lose the plot (much as in the examples I used of Microsoft throwing "Windows" branding on everything -- what in the hell does a search engine have to do with an operating system?).
I don't think releasing a bunch of non-browser products under the "Firefox" brand strengthens the brand, I think it weakens it.
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leonis_csem
Smack-Fu Master, in training
This was exactly my thought when I saw it for the first time. Didn't their designers notice that? Gitlab isn't particularly unknown software.
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Jesus, we go through this every time. The fox in the Firefox logo is Vulpes vulpes, the common red fox. "Firefox" is also a colloquial term for the Red Panda, and as such Mozilla actively supports Red Panda conservation causes and uses the animal as an unexclusive mascot.
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When was the last time that Slashdot's opinion was relevant to anything?
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That Office 2000 icon looks minimalistic and modern, it would fit perfectly with The UI formerly known as Metro. I wonder if a designer at Microsoft is thinking "Fuck, I just should use the old one, but nobody's gonna pay me for that, so I'll make something less perfect."Green plus 'X' has meant I'm about to open Excel for almost twenty years.
Similarly the Internet Explorer logo:
Surprisingly minimal for version 4 in 1997 (!), then colors, lighting and depth were added, before going back to the same minimal style with a different hue (designers!).
Kinda highlights the lunacy of design cycles. I exaggerate, of course, design is indeed hard and no, I don't want everything to still look like Windows 95 (well, sometimes I do...).
But this whole notion that we have to change up an icon to signal users that the app has been updated seems stupid to me.
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I like the masterbrand icon from System 2, the whitespace in the fox icons from System 2 and their color scheme, and for everything else System 1.
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Rebranding is very often mismanaged, which is self-evidently a sign of bad management*.
But rebranding is a very real problem.
No brand can avoid to constantly evolve, in application and symbolism, and there are very definitely times when it needs a snap and a fix, evolutionary or revolutionary. Be it because of bad nurturing (in application, or public perception), or because of changed landscapes, a well-thought rebranding is often due and can be a major force in shaping the destiny of a company and its products.
* and the way Mozilla seems to enjoy dealing with it is like on the very end of the lame scale, right there at the "omg u serious" notch. Take a couple of proposal that would badly need several rounds of iteration; limited in their scope to icons; and feed them to the public for thumbs-up... omg u serious, what you think you are, the tourism promotion office of some godforsaken rural county? =D
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