> [note: this is being cross posted to planet.mozilla.org, bugzilla,
> and mozillazine]
> We are now in the process of refreshing the Firefox application
> icon, so I wanted to address some of the initial questions we are
> getting, and look at some specific examples in the technology
> industry of product brand evolution.
> ==Questions==
> >Isn't a .5 release the wrong time to revise the application icon,
> shouldn't we wait for Firefox 4?
> There aren't a whole lot of other products out there that issue .5
> releases (more on this below), so as a result there isn't really a
> lot of precedent for what is normal, and what is surprising. The
> reason for this is that we've been able to work on Firefox in
> shorter (albeit not as short as everyone would like) iterative
> development cycles. But I guess the larger issue here is "is
> Firefox 3.5 a significant enough release to warrant a revised
> icon?" Looking at the long list of all of amazing things our
> community has been able to pull off for this release, at least my
> opinion is: yes, it definitely is.
> >Is there enough time for an organized deployment of the new icon
> across all of the places where it needs to be updated?
> Not really. Our plan is to get the icon updated in the product
> itself, and on mozilla.com in places where we are specifically
> talking about Firefox 3.5 in time for the launch. We'll of course
> make images available at a range of resolutions as soon as we
> finalize them so people can update download buttons and other
> instances of the Firefox 3.5 icon during the Release Candidate
> phase, while we are throughly testing the application. There
> admittedly isn't as much time as everyone would like, but that's the
> nature of a very competitive (and exciting) marketplace.
> >Imagine how many wallpapers and t-shirts will be thrown out!
> One doesn't need to walk more than two feet in the Mountain View
> office to run into the current Firefox logo, so I have a pretty
> visceral sense of how disruptive shipping a new icon would be. In
> fact, we were so worried about the logistics of doing an update
> around the time of launching Firefox 3 that we ultimately decided to
> canceled the project entirely. In retrospect, my opinion is that a
> gradual transition (and the logistical challenges that come with it)
> is worth not being frozen in time. Also, the most valuable and
> cherished t-shirts in our community are often the old ones, so if
> you have a current Firefox t-shirt, a new icon will make it retro,
> and give it an ever increasing nostalgia value.
> >Why bother fixing something that isn't broken?
> In a marketplace that is focused on products that are newer, faster,
> lighter and shinier, design work is inherently perishable. Part of
> this is larger trends and fashion (for a period of time cars had
> fins), and part of this is simply ongoing visual change as an
> indication of overall progress.
> ==The Evolution of Product Brands==
> Here are some examples of the visual evolution of some other major
> technology product brands.
> >Internet Explorer
> http://people.mozilla.com/~faaborg/files/20090515-evolvingProductBran...
> The shape remains very consistent, with the evolution occurring with
> the texture, color and lighting.
> >Windows
> http://people.mozilla.com/~faaborg/files/20090515-evolvingProductBran...
> >OS X
> http://people.mozilla.com/~faaborg/files/20090515-evolvingProductBran...
> Here we see an example of new branding for every dot release (10.1
> to 10.5). Consistency is achieved primarily with the X. But even
> the style of the X evolves with each iteration, eventually losing
> serifs, and transitioning from aqua blue through jaguar spots, to
> two phases of brushed metal, and most recently obsidian (in space!)
> >SONY PlayStation
> http://people.mozilla.com/~faaborg/files/20090515-evolvingProductBran...
> >Nintendo
> http://people.mozilla.com/~faaborg/files/20090515-evolvingProductBran...
> The brand starts with divergent Japanese and North American
> versions, then merges together. Nintendo as a product brand is then
> largely abandoned in favor of a new simpler brand.
> >Xbox
> http://people.mozilla.com/~faaborg/files/20090515-evolvingProductBran...
> Brand consistency is achieved primarily with the color green, and an
> X that breaks through some form of surface. The notion of an inner
> glowing core is also consistent between versions.
> In comparison to these, our strategy is going to be more in line
> with the more conservative approaches to product brand evolution
> (IE, OS X, Xbox). In the following post I'll detail the history and
> planned evolution of the Firefox icon.
> -Alex
> On May 6, 2009, at 1:20 AM, Alex Faaborg wrote:
>> As we get closer to releasing Shiretoko (Firefox 3.5) we are
>> considering that this might be a good time to update and evolve the
>> Firefox application icon. We will likely be leveraging some
>> conceptual work created by Jon Hicks during the development of
>> Firefox 3, but otherwise we are just now getting started.
>> I'll be posting regular updates to this group, as well as my blog
>> at http://blog.mozilla.com/faaborg (in case you read this group but
>> not planet, or vice versa). As the project progresses I'll be
>> posting the creative briefs as we send them out, draft artwork as
>> it comes in, and I'll be highlighting some of the feedback we are
>> receiving from the community.
>> But before diving too deep into the specifics of how the Firefox
>> icon might be evolving, I would like have at least one thread
>> focusing on the higher level question of why refreshing the icon is
>> probably a good idea.
>> A Visual Indication of Progress
>> When thinking about how people perceive a software application, I
>> often picture the tip of an iceberg. So much of the innovation,
>> hard work and brainpower from our development community goes into
>> significant and important improvements that usually aren't readily
>> apparent to the user. This is particularly true when you are
>> building a Web browser, since the application is fundamentally
>> creating a platform for other applications.
>> Firefox 3.5 is in many ways more of a platform release than a user
>> interface release. That's not to say we haven't added a lot of
>> valuable user facing features, but the underlying changes that are
>> shipping with Firefox 3.5 are really remarkable. This release adds
>> support for HTML5 audio and video, downloadable fonts, geolocation,
>> and a wealth of other great features for Web developers. But
>> perhaps most notably Firefox 3.5's JavaScript performance is 3 to 4
>> times faster than Firefox 3 thanks to a brand new engine, and 10
>> times faster than Firefox 2.
>> But all of these improvements, despite being really powerful for
>> the development of the Web, are not exactly apparent before you
>> even launch the application. And because of this it is perhaps too
>> easy to unfairly assume when you download the new version that the
>> product is stagnating, and that unlike a (admittedly very shiny)
>> competitor, we are no longer on the bleeding edge of pushing the
>> Web forward.
>> The Icon as a Chassis
>> Something else that I've been thinking a lot about recently is how
>> effectively visual information in an exterior chassis can
>> communicate the power of the complex system that it contains. Two
>> examples would be the design of sports cars and the industrial
>> design
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