Common design elements to create affiliation with Mozilla

[David Boswell]

> Common design elements - do you mean like how the thunderbird wings
> look kind of like the sides of a drum?
> http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/

You can create an affiliation among sites in all sorts of different ways. Here are some examples of what some community sites have done:

* Similar main navigation styles (see www.mozilla.com and support.mozilla.com)

* Similar headers and/or footers (see planet.mozilla.org and www.mozilla.org)

* Common font style for logos (most community logos and wordmarks use the Meta Bold font)

* Common color palettes (most Firefox product related sites have a similar light blue color scheme)

There's a lot of discretion here -- some of these examples are more subtle than others and some sites want to have a closer affiliation than others. There's also many different ways to do things since we don't have any common design guidelines that can be used across sites.

I don't know exactly what the Drumbeat site's needs are and how closely aligned we'd like to have things, so it may make sense to talk things over with the people designing the site and then we can report back to the group with some specific recommendations.

David

[Mark Surman]

One thing to look at is common elements across different Mozilla brands
(e.g. Firefox, Thunderbird, Mozilla.org) vs. w/ the same brand (e.g. all
Firefox related sites).

ms

> _______________________________________________
> community-drumbeat mailing list
> community...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/community-drumbeat

[David Boswell]

> One thing to look at is common elements across different Mozilla
> brands (e.g. Firefox, Thunderbird, Mozilla.org) vs. w/ the same
> brand (e.g. all Firefox related sites).

Definitely. There are a few layers to the whole thing :)

[Ned Schwartz]

Hi,

Picking up on what Mark is saying, it seems to me that the examples David gives of "similar navigation" (mozilla.com & support.mozilla.com) are in fact the same navigation; in that case, they are in fact two items on the same nav (even though that nav spans multiple domains in a bit of a non-traditional way).

Likewise, the light-blue colour scheme ties pages from different domains into one "site", despite the pages actually appearing on several different domains.

I don't think Drumbeat would need to follow these conventions unless it were to appear as at top-level link in that same nav. These conventions create cohesion across the sites linked from that top nav.

Another possibility would be to adopt the kind of harmony that Firefox product sites like the Firefox product site [http://www.mozilla.com/] and the Thunderbird product site [http://www.mozillamessaging.com/] share; the structural bones of both sites are very similar, but the colours and tone of illustrations distinguish them. 

We could bring Drumbeat more closely under this sturcure. Though my feeling is that this harmony makes sense between these two sites as they are both mozilla products, while drumbeat is a different animal; it is an event or a community rather than a software product. 

On the other hand, I do think that the style of the logo and the use of the Meta Bold font for headings on the Drumbeat site will communicate it's affiliation with the mozilla brand while still maintaining a sense of independence for the Drumbeat project from other Mozilla efforts.

My feeling about the design of the site is that we want to let people know that this is a mozilla project, but the design of the navigation and other elements should distinguish this project as it's own entity, distinct from the mozilla foundation or any of Mozilla's products for example.

I think a closer model for how Drumbeat relates to the rest of mozilla is the spreadfirefox.com, and especially the "Five Years of Firefox" micro-site []http://www.spreadfirefox.com/5years/] relate to the rest of the brand. These sites feel very purpose-built to communicate their particular intent and don't share very much with the rest of mozilla's web sites, but they do convey their affiliation strongly through use of firefox and mozilla logos in prominent places.

I would love to hear more thoughts on this subject!

Ned

[Carlo Frinolli | nois3lab]

Il giorno 30/nov/2009, alle ore 18.12, Ned Schwartz ha scritto:

I would love to hear more thoughts on this subject!

hi Ned, and all.

I'd like to participate to this thread, but before that as i was saying in IRC, i need to sync me up with all the great work you've already done.

I really like the general impact, need to focus on details and all...

Carlo Frinolli [ creative director ]

[ website | http://nois3lab.it ]

[ corporate tweets | http://twitter.com/nois3lab ]

[ personal tweets | http://twitter.com/carl0s_ ]

via di scorticabove 77, 00156 Roma

tel. +390695557042 (direct)

tel. +390695557019 (office)

mobile. +39 347 31 12 050

skype. carlo_nois3lab

[David Boswell]

> Likewise, the light-blue colour scheme ties pages from different
> domains into one "site", despite the pages actually appearing on
> several different domains.

Yes, although there are different Firefox sites they are all linked to within the product so it's one big Firefox site from the user's perspective.

> Though my feeling is that this harmony makes sense between these two
> sites as they are both mozilla products, while drumbeat is a
> different animal; it is an event or a community rather than
> a software product. 

Drumbeat certainly isn't a software product, but there is a commonality with Firefox in the sense that it's a major effort by Mozilla to accomplish it's mission. So in some sense it is a product and we can take cues from Firefox branding. If something doesn't rise to the level of 'product' (however that's defined) IMO it shouldn't create all new branding.

> I think a closer model for how Drumbeat relates to the rest of mozilla
> is the spreadfirefox.com, and especially the "Five Years of Firefox"
> micro-site

These are other good examples. Personally though I think we've gone a little overboard with the micro-sites in the community. Mozilla is big and sprawling enough without dozens of unique site designs and I think we need to simplify things at this point.

I'd like to see a small handful of brand designs that most other sites can fall under. Not to say that these sites have to look exactly the same, of course.

Note, affiliation can go beyond design elements. For instance, I think the 'Looking for' set of links at the top of www.mozilla.org is a useful way to link different community sites together. Other sites could have the same set of 'Looking for' links to tie things together but they could style those however they want.

David

[David Boswell]

Carlo, great, I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on this. BTW, I can't make the Monday morning community calls, so if there's enough interest I'd be happy to take part in a design related call at some other point during the week.

hi Ned, and all. I'd like to participate to this thread, but before that as i was saying in IRC, i need to sync me up with all the great work you've already done. I really like the general impact, need to focus on details and all... Carlo Frinolli [ creative director ] [ website | http://nois3lab.it ] [ corporate tweets | http://twitter.com/nois3lab ] [ personal tweets | http://twitter.com/carl0s_ ] via di scorticabove 77, 00156 Roma tel. +390695557042 (direct) tel. +390695557019 (office) mobile. +39 347 31 12 050 skype. carlo_nois3lab

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[Ned Schwartz]

These are other good examples.  Personally though I think we've gone a little overboard with the micro-sites in the community.  Mozilla is big and sprawling enough without dozens of unique site designs and I think we need to simplify things at this point.

I'd like to see a small handful of brand designs that most other sites can fall under.  Not to say that these sites have to look exactly the same, of course.

This seems to be the heart of the matter – developi

 

Note, affiliation can go beyond design elements.  For instance, I think the 'Looking for' set of links at the top of www.mozilla.org is a useful way to link different community sites together.  Other sites could have the same set of 'Looking for' links to tie things together but they could style those however they want.

David