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Branding Mozilla: Towards Mozilla 2.0
sgarrity writes "I've written some recommendations for the branding and visual identity of the Mozilla Foundation's project and product line. I argue that the Mozilla Project should adopt a simple, strong, consistent visual identity for the Mozilla products including consistent icons across applications that mesh with the host operating system. Read Branding Mozilla: Towards Mozilla 2.0 and let us know what you think."
The main reason you'd want to brand is to leave an imprint in the mind of somebody who's a potential consumer... But really, at this point, why bother?
For the exact reason you state: the potential consumers. Branding would be useful in getting more people to give ol' Moz a try. One of the main things about the average surfer, I find, is that (s)he simply doesn't know about it.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
A stack of reasons - mostly relating to adoption within the workplace. As soon as I fire up Mozilla in front of a newbie they comment along the lines of 'playing games huh' or similar.
Im not suggesting the monster gets replaced with some prick with a laptop looking serious while rubbing his chin as his foxy secretary takes notes in their walnut and leather office - but something a little more businessy wouldn't hurt.
Branding gives you things to hang onto. Some people like their jeans more because missy elliot wears then (or says she wears them). I'd like Mozilla more if I didnt look like a dinosaur geek everytime it starts up.
As long as things are kept simple, light and work well then branding will only help. If that helps then I'm for it
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Branding is what you do when you haven't got a better product than the other guy, but you want people to think you do.
I agree that we should make Mozilla's icons a bit more consistent across applications and platforms, but I think the Mozilla lizard is just fine as far as logos go.
When you're going up against Microsoft and its built-in IE, you're fighting a losing game; the proper way to beat Microsoft is to play a different game than the one they want to play, because they own the field, the ball and they set the rules.
"Branding" is just another word for shining sh*t and calling it gold.
If you want to improve usability you can do it by using different icons for Mozilla itself and files associated with Mozilla (for example html-files). Currently I have Mozilla and a html file added to my Windows coolbar and they both use the same icon. InternetExplorer has the face "e" for IE itself, and a document with the "e" in front for associated files. Please do something similar for future versions of Mozilla. I really want to see from the icon if a file is a html file or the Mozilla executable.
Signature deleted by lameness filter.
Give Mozilla a unique selling proposition - something that you can tell a prospective user about why they must switch from IE to Mozilla, i.e., "You should switch to Mozilla because it does X", where X is something obviously good, and not easily done with IE. For 95% of prospective users, X !=
- cross-platform
- thwarts the evil M$
- is a really cool open-source project
- and so forth
Lose the dragon. It's difficult enough to introduce something new into a corporate environment, and mythical firebreathing critters are of no help. Doesn't have to be boring - just not too strange.
RTFA, Mozilla 2.0 *IS* Firebird 1.0
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." --George Orwell
They should NEVER have bothered with the developer names Firebird, Thunderbird, etc. From the start they should have called them Mozilla Browser, Mozilla Mail, etc. They have lost fast name recognition until the change does occur, and they have created a lot of confusion. I remember telling a lot of people to switch to Mozilla. I didn't tell anyone about Firebird because I knew the name wouldn't stick for long. Others on the other hand, have been name-dropping Firebird all over the place. Imagine when it's changed back. You will have Netscape, Mozilla, Firebird, Mozilla Firebird, etc. No one should be expected to keep up with the names like this. Most people will just stick to I.E. and not bother with avaluating what looks like too many choices to them
The real problem with browser branding is that currently people fail to see the browser as something which should be branded. It's a utility product that allows you to view sites, and that's about it. Who cares what's beneath?
By establishing IE as a client-run COM control, Microsoft only further implemented that idea. You can hardly brand something that people view as a tool.
For example, what sports cars do you have in your garage? Ferrari or Porsche I'd assume. And what's the brand of your kitchen sink? Eeeh, who cares, some crap made in China and purchased at Home Depot. The same with the browser - when the sites are more or less the same, and it's the sites you care about, who cares what brand the browser is.
Nader-2004
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Who gives a crap whether or not an open source project has a good "brand"? It's not like people are trying to sell it. The ones who care, know about it already and aren't going to care whether or not it's a catchy name.
Many developers do care.
I know I am a lot more interested in contributing my limited free time to a project if lots of people are actually using the thing, so I don't feel like I've wasted my time making something that is more or less irrelevant outside my little geek circle. For me it is far more satisfying to develop things with wide usage.
And of course the other thing....a lot of the benefit of having mozilla out there is in helping keep micorsoft in check (as is the case with linux and other open source things). The more people using mozilla, the more effective it is.
I use Mozilla as my primary OS X browser. Mozilla what? I dunno -- Mozilla. I'm probably well into the 99th percentile of the computer using population as far as familiarity with Mozilla goes and I still can't keep straight the differences between Camino, Firebird, Thunderbird, Phoenix and the rest of the Mozilla projects. Let alone the new names that result after each lawsuit or C&D letter.
I realize that the open source community loves endless new not-really-clever names, coming up with ludicrous justifications for why something isn't infringing and arguing about what should begin with GNU/. But if the Mozilla people want to appeal to a wider base, they need to realize that mostly people don't regard changing software as a hobby.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read. You want to introduce users to Mozilla by clandestinely downloading it? What kind of customer loyalty do you hope to gain? One of the things that makes Mozilla different than IE is the constant care and attention that they give to their users. Your "clandestine" means do not do that, resorting to means only used by script kiddies and spammers.
You see this on marketing type websites where there is a random picture of some attractive person wearing nice clothes, seemingly there just to take up space. Do people actually get warm fuzzies from that or what?
Sorry for the OT rant
The problem I have found with Mozilla, is that most people just don't care enough. Personally I use, and love Mozilla. Like you I haven't seen a pop-up in a long time, that I didn't specifically allow. I am also a tyrant when it comes to cookies. I hate them, I see little need for a web site to be able to track me, unless its for user-login or purchasing purposes (and even then, I usually delete the cookie after I am done with the site). So, I have Mozilla ask me whether or not to store a cookie, when a web site attempts to. Most of the time, I will simply check the "Always do this" box and hit Deny.
The problem comes in when my girlfriend sits down at my computer. First off, I had to get her to belive that Mozilla was a web browser, and that IE was not necessary. That out of the way, she hated it. Having to deal with cookies annoyed her, she didn't care and just wanted it to work. She never even tried the tabbed browsing really. About the only thing about it that didn't annoy her was the lack of pop-ups, and even then some of the sites she went to were the kind that used pop-ups in the design of the page, so she didn't even appreciate that feature that much.
Basically, all of this is to say that most people aren't going to switch, no matter how the program is branded. They are used to IE, with all of its security holes. They want a program that just goes when they click on the purple monkey. They are willing to install another program which blocks pop-ups based on the title text, and to train that program. In all, they are afraid of change. And that is what Mozilla needs to overcome, it needs people getting their friends/girlfriends/family to use it and see the advantages. As long as it looks reasonably clean, and functions close to IE, that is enough. And damn well don't go changing the interface between versions, once you have something that works, don't fix it, you'll just scare and alienate people.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
I've read through a good chunk of the replies here, and I keep coming across people saying "well you can change icons like this", "or do a splash screen like that." etc. The problem is, is that 90% of the computer users simply want to install, and be done with it and see nothing but a desktop icon. They don't want to go changing icons, or splash screens, or whatever. That's what this author is trying to get at. He makes a good point about the computer geeks and their clever naming, etc. It seems as if programmers have this holier-than-thou attitude. "If you don't like something, you should change it yourself or not use it." I know that it is a hobby to most people and there is no commercial gain to be had. It's almost like OSS (or whatever you want to call it) is like old school punk rock. You want the recognition, but you always fear being called a sellout. In the software world, you want to have this really great piece of software that is free and takes over the world and throws Microsoft off its pedestal. But at the same time, you don't want to conform to the game they are playing. Yes, people often don't know about non-MS ways of doing things on a computer, but Microsoft has done a halfway decent job at making a computing experience consistent to the average Joe computer user. And so people come to expect that out of others. I personally am willing to do things a slightly harder, or different way. I know that when I use free software, that things may be a little quirky, or there may be some weird fixes that I have to implement to get it work all the way. I've made that choice, but there are many out there who won't/can't/don't make it. They just want it to work out of the box for a million years without a hitch.
Also Internet-aware cellphones (many of those use opera), IE's constant flow of security issues and complete lack of development and of course Linux desktop inroads especially in governments will contribute to the erosion of IE domination.
In 3-4 years, IE will still make up the majority of hits, but the remainder will be far too large to ignore.
Honestly I don't see "branding Mozilla" influencing that developments in any way, although it sure can't hurt...
Anyway do yourself (and your gf) a favor and just turn off the cookie-paranoia.
BTW, most people I've shown Mozilla were very impressed with tabbed browsing, it's definitly a feature a lot (of course not all, but definitely many non-techies) like.
I found the exact opposite user sentiment with Mozilla. I have tested Mozilla on two different variants of Mom (tm) and they were ecstatic. No more popups, fewer goofy ActiveX animations. They understood the security concepts that I explained (so those outlook attachments can't hurt me in Mozilla Mail? Cool!). Once, one of the Moms even ran into a bug and so I went to the Bugzilla site and found a workaround. They were so shocked that there was such a community of support, they wanted to know what other programs were like this! One Mom wants an open-source replacement for Quicken!
The key thing here is to give them useful features without bombarding them. The popup stopper is a killer app, no doubt. But cookie prompts are just too much, so I set cookies to be limited to the current session. Fixes the tracking problem without sacrificing convenience. I turned off saving of forms and passwords, and they learned to like re-entering passwords since it meant their son couldn't see their financial data. One mom also enjoyed being able to right-click on the Monkey and turn him off. Woohooo!
They key is in presentation. Don't install a firewall that prompts them constantly. Or a cookie manager. Or a download manager. If there isn't a way to secure a system without prompting the user everytime, then it won't be accepted.
Well, I'm a professional graphic designer... so here's my take on this.
Good logos are very very simple. Good logos can be boiled down a strong one or two colored silhouette built with simple lines and shapes. Moreover, good logos are clearly recognizable at both small and large sizes.
The human brain reads and interprets simple shapes very quickly. Furthermore, the brain remembers and recalls simple shapes faster then complex graphics. This is, more or less, a psychological fact.
When you take a glance at a good simple logo it gets stuck in your head. Even if you've only seen it once, and you can't quite pin-point the company associated with it, there's a good chance it will seem "familiar" to you. Familiarity is essential to a good brand. People like to use things they feel familiar with... even if their sense of familiarity is coming from a near subconscious level.
It should also be noted that simple logos are easier to slap on everything. They are easier to print, it's easier to use as decoration, etc etc.
Honestly, Tux is not a very good logo. Most people don't know what that orange and black rendered penguin is all about (trust me, I guarantee you they don't). It's only the geeks like us who know what Tux is. Common people remember the RedHat logo, or the Suse logo... but not tux. If Tux's shape was simplified (kind if like what IBM did with it http://www.humanist.de/erik/rza/ibmlinux.jpg ) it would be much more recognizable to the general public.
And as for Mozilla. Well, Mozilla currently has that lizard head and the "M." Both are fairly simple (think the lizard could be simplified some more though), yet Mozilla.org doesn't stick with them. They don't place these logos all aspects of their products, they keep creating new icons and splash screens, etc. Mozilla.org needs to work on their branding. They need to pick one general logo, and they need to boldly place it everywhere.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
As boring as Windows already is, I certainly don't want to add Mozilla to list of yet another boring app.
I think one of the reasons why Mozilla is so great is absence of marketers. All the stupid buzzwords, and spin tactics they use to try to sell a product are what turn me off on a product, and I think there are many like me.
I have convinced many people to switch to Mozilla simply by showing them the features (tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking, form management, etc). After that I leave it up to them. So far I have seen bout 95% of those people move to Mozilla because they like the features and not the branding.
Netscape was branded and look where it ended up.
Favorites - in Win2K or XP, why can't it just use my IE favorites?
It does. Automatically. It's called "Imported IE Favorites" in your Bookmarks menu.
The imported favorites are a copy of your IE favorites, copied into your Mozilla profile. If you add new favorites with IE after importing, Mozilla doesn't know about them. New bookmarks added from Mozilla don't show up in IE either.
Remember that IE is so integrated into the Windows shell that a simple directory window has a "favorites" menu, so even if you do all of your web browsing in Mozilla you will still see the favorites everywhere.
where there's fish, there's cats
Seriously, though, I was thinking about this last night. Mozilla needs an ad campaign. Imagine the following commercial:
Man standing in a grocery store, contemplating which brand of tomato soup to purchase. From nowhere, an annoying ad man springs into existence.
Annoying ad man: Buy Kambell's Tomato Soup (C), it's the soupiest!
Another ad man beams in.
Annoying ad man 2: No, buy Pargeso's Redy2Eeet Tomato Soup (C), it's creamier!
Customer: AAAAAAHHHHH!
Narrator, sardonic voice: Tired of pop-ups?
Cut to yellow background with Mozilla dragon and the word "Mozilla". Fade to black.
I'm tellin' ya, it'll work!
Too late to be known as Bush the First, he's sure to be known as Bush the Worst.
In my experience, most Windows users don't use Mozilla because they never heard of it (at least, the ones I teached Mozilla never went back to IE). Some users are actually willing to pay for spam filters, popup blockers, download managers and tabbed browsing.
I want to put a box in my homepage that looks for MSIE user-agents and displays something like "Are you using Internet Explorer? Did you know that there's a better browser with popup blocking and download management included? Try Mozilla! (link to end-user website)".
The Mozilla folks seems to agree with me on this, but there's still a barrier: English. Windows users worldwide are used to their fully localized environment, and afraid of anything in foreign languages. The language packs are too buried in the site. Mozilla's new user-oriented website is a great idea, but there should be localized versions of it, with easily accessible downloads of localized software.
Prescriptive grammar:linguistics
The Mozilla "dinosaur" theme is older than the Raptors. Netscape was using the "Mo-zilla" character on it's site as early as Fall of '94, which, incidentally, was the same time the Raptors were having a contest to design their logo.
And at the time, they looked nothing alike anyway (Moz was green and anthromorphic).
Over time, the green guy logo evolved with the Moz project, notably turning Red (almost as a joke) to revel in the socialist nature of the Mozilla.org foundation when Gecko went open-source. It got pretty silly, Soviet-inspired designs with stars, sickles, and even fur hats.
I guessed the like the image of a Red, more realistic looking dino, with the flames and everything. I don't think it was because Mozilla.org members are all Toronto fans (Bulls I might believe).
And since no one could confuse a web browser with a basketball team in the marketplace anyway, I don't think we'll be seeing any trademark infrigment suits anytime soon.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
I thought that the strongest new brands in a market with name recognition is to be the opposite of said brand. Pepsi's market share rose when it had it's "New Generation" campaign (implying that the old standard, Coca-cola, was the Old Generation). Avis car rental saw a gigantic increase with it's "We try Harder" [than the other companies]. Burger King versus McDonalds. Fox versus the Big Three. Heck, Linux versus Windows.
Consumers seem to think in simple dualities. There is the iconic brand... and then there is the one that is the anti-brand.
The problem for Mozilla? It is a product that is nigh identical to IE. Functionally they are the same (with only minor variations and where it differs siginficantly [that you need to do a third-party install] isn't a major selling point). To some extent it's the difference between a Chevy and Pontiac, not a Harley and a Honda.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Bah... I could go on but mozilla is for geeks right now.
Why does somebody have to say this every time a piece of software from the open source community is evaluated as a replacement for a piece of proprietary software? Granted, in some cases it is justified, but this is just absurd. I'm sorry, but not being able do drag-n-drop toolbars does not make Mozilla a geek-only toy.
If somebody is using new software, they need to accept that they are using new software, and not insist that it behave in exactly the same way, shape, form that their old software did. If they want IE they need to use IE.
My time is precious, and I need to spend it using the application, not modifying the application.
I believe that was the offensive passage. Ignoring developers, demanding they make things better for you while not being willing to do any work yourself is a common attitude that is affecting a lot of projects (Note, you is a general y'all, not YOU).
Anything is possible given time and money.
There are three reasons for that:
- dataloss protection
If a bug in mozilla destroyed your IE favourites you'd be mightily confused. Mozilla never, ever, writes to your IE favourites.
- bookmark groups
Mozilla can bookmark more than one site under a single bookmark. In firebird though, they've gone back to letting you open a whole folder of bookmarks at once, so this isn't really a good reasons anymore.
- roaming profiles
Functionality to share bookmarks is already included in mozilla (I believe, and if not it's being worked on). Either you'd have to use IE favourites on mac and linux (unlikely), or you need your own format.
Incidentally, you could just as well say that it's annoying IE doesn't use bookmarks.html, since netscape's bookmarks.html standard predates the very existance of the IE browser. MS just thought "oh, we're just going to do it different, not for any good reason", and that led to the mess we're in today.
Still, I'd like it if mozilla could easily export the bookmarks.html file to IE's favourites.
The imported favorites are a copy of your IE favorites, copied into your Mozilla profile. If you add new favorites with IE after importing, Mozilla doesn't know about them. New bookmarks added from Mozilla don't show up in IE either.
You've hit the nail on the head!
I've been using Mozilla Firebird (Phoenix as it was known back then) since the day I saw it announced on slashdot. The 0.1 release became my default browser within minutes of installing it.
If the Mozilla team are as dedicated as they sound about making the browser feel like part of the host OS, then hopefully they will address this problem. Windows has a directory for favorites that is integrated into the shell. You click on the start menu, favourites is listed. Why can't mozilla make use of this facility? This is my #1 gripe with the browser.
I've deployed Firebird to all the public access computers at the university I'm a sys admin at - it wasn't requested, I did it because I love Firebird so much that I wan't others to see it, use it, love it and install it on their own computers. But I suspect that students simply won't use it, because with IE, we can redirect the favorites folder to a network location so that favorites follow the users to which ever machine they decide to log on to, thanks to a simple group policy setting. Does this work in mozilla? Not the way the bookmarks work at the moment.
And why does Firebird (and Mozilla) create a profile within a profile? What is the point of that? I've not found a way for a single user to create multiple profiles for themeselves, the Firebird team may not realise but this really makes deploying Firebird to large (windows) networks a very time consuming and difficult process.
Favorites go here "%userprofile%\favorites"
User config goes here "HKEY_CURRENT_USER"
User setting overridden by global settings found in here "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE"
This is the way applications should work under windows OS's. Dear Firebird team, please fix this.
I think IE loses the browser domination the day Sony ships the Playstation 3 (with a non-IE browser, which will probably be Mozilla).
Well, that depends on how visible the browser is.
OK, I accept that a greater number of hits by a Moz based browser would force sites (banks especially) to support Moz, but in the wider context of this discussion - which is about branding and Moz having a strong brand identity - this isn't necessarily true.
If Sony integrate the browser correctly, the only brand which will be visible is the Sony brand - PS3 users won't care what they're surfing with, all they'll care about is that they are surfing. Essentially, the browser vanishes.
Microsoft have picked up on this too - hence the line that IE6 is the last browser all future browsing capability being integrated with Windows. IE will vanish, but browsing will be accessible from explorer/outlook/word or however they implement it.
From the "Joe Sixpack" of view, having a "browser" as a seperate application begins to look like an optional and unecessary extra and a strong brand just serves to emphasise its "seperateness".
Remember the audience you're speaking to. This is a demanding crowd here. We are the types to complain when someone tries to set a cookie in our browser when all we want to do is read an article. I've never understood this. I too am a cookie conspiracy theorist and deny cookies to the end of days.
I admit there are times though when cookies are useful (e.g. e-commerce, user preferences, etc.), so I'll allow cookies where they are warranted. In Firebird or Mozilla, that means dancing through a couple of menus to sway these settings. I'd love a little switch say on the status bar that quickly allows me to toggle between a "read-only" mode where no cookies or tracking can take place and a less strict browsing mode that allows cookies, etc. I know I can be tracked by IP address, but goddamn cookies all the same.
I mean 95% of the time I just want to read some nouns and verbs and to hell with everything else.
It just feels wrong.
I like to think of myself as a logical person and I like to be able to justify my choices and opinions.
But recently I've been noticing that, in fact, I make decisions based on gut feeling then justify those choices with whatever logical argument applies.
Cookies just feel wrong. Spyware probably hasn't hurt anyone either but it still feels wrong. I like open source software because it feels right (and then I justify it with arguments most people on/. will be familliar with).
Cookies are a symptom of what is wrong with the world, Orwell's 1984 is not a future to be scared of, it's here now! It has crept up on us by stealth.
Cookies are just one part of a whole and if no one speaks out sooner or later you're locked in the ministry of love with a rat on your face screaming "Do it to Julia!"
"Do it to
Karma: Bad. Calmer, good.