Mozilla is rebranding Firefox. The company is asking for feedback on the new look, which will try to cover the various Firefox offerings.
For most people, Firefox refers to a browser, but the company wants the brand to encompass all the various apps and services that the Firefox family of internet products cover, “from easy screenshotting and file sharing to innovative ways to access the internet using voice and virtual reality.” The fox with a flaming tail “doesn’t offer enough design tools to represent this entire product family,” Mozilla believes.
Instead of recoloring the logo and dissecting the fox, the company wants to start from scratch. That said, the name “Firefox” is staying, so Mozilla doesn’t have that much wiggle room.
A team of Mozilla product and brand designers has come up with two options:
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The first icon is the Firefox masterbrand icon, an umbrella under which all the product lines will live. Mozilla hopes this is what users will one day think of when they hear the word “Firefox.”
The next lines, in order, are as follows: general purpose browser icons (including Developer Edition and Nightly colors), singularly-focused browser icons (Firefox Focus and Firefox Reality), and finally new applications and services (the five icons in the last two lines).
The two design system are supposed to “embrace all of the Firefox products in the pipeline and those still in the minds of our Emerging Technologies group.” Mozilla is asking users for feedback, just like when it revamped the Mozilla brand.
To be clear, that means Mozilla is not crowdsourcing the answer, is not asking users to vote, and is not asking for free design submissions. The company is simply asking for users to comment what they think on the announcement blog post.
Before you comment, however, you should read this warning:
Extreme caveat: Although the products and projects are real, these design systems are still a work of fiction. Icons are not final. Each individual icon will undergo several rounds of refinement, or may change entirely, between now and their respective product launches. Our focus at this point is on the system.
Mozilla is still exploring typography, graphic patterns, motion, naming, events, partnerships, and other elements of the system. A final system will be rolled out “over the next few months” based on user feedback, formal user testing, and “our product knowledge and design sensibilities.”
Mozilla says it will be using these criteria to evaluate the work:
- Do these two systems still feel like Firefox?
- How visually cohesive is each of them? Does each hold together?
- Can the design logic of these systems stretch to embrace new products in the future?
- Do these systems reinforce the speed, safety, reliability, wit, and innovation that Firefox stands for?
- Do these systems suggest our position as a tech company that puts people over profit?
Personally, I’m struggling with the first question for both designs. But maybe that’s because I only saw the proposals a few days ago — I guess the second one could grow on me.
