Closed Bug 742118 Opened 13 years ago Closed 12 years ago

Design a new MDN logo with "Mozilla Developer Network" on it

Categories

(Marketing :: Design, task)

Product:
Marketing
Component:
Design
Platform:
x86
macOS
Type:
task
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
RESOLVED FIXED

People

(Reporter: canuckistani, Assigned: smartell)

Details

We ( the Websites & Evangelism team ) briefly discussed having an MDN logo with the full "Mozilla Developer Network" text on it as well as the existing "MDN" logo. I think this is really important to make happen as both events and attendees recognise and want the Mozilla brand and might not realise exactly that "MDN" stands for Mozilla Developer Network. I also think it will be useful for developers who might not know much about MDN or who are seeing the logo for the first time. I wouldn't have understood that it meant Mozilla Developer Network the first time. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that we change the logo on the MDN site or anywhere else. I'm just suggesting that we create a logo with the verbose text that is specifically used for events and developer outreach.
cc'ing Stormy & Robert as a good start
Note: in Q4 of 2011 I and Jay Patel engaged a freelancer named Matt Ternoway to do some MDN & Jetpack designs, and th team quite liked this approach for an MDN logo: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/44296964/mdn_shirts/img/MDN_HackDay_v3.gif There was soem discussion about the word-ordering and how it read eg 'developer mozilla network', and Matt responded: "Thanks for the feedback! Glad everyone is liking the look of the designs. Noticed some concerns about v3, with the rounded typography treatment...although breaking up type like this is a common design treatment...I think the thing that may be throwing people off is the hierarchy. Since Mozilla Developer Network is the brand itself it may not be wise to break it up...we could do something like replace where it reads Mozilla, and have it read 'MDN' in that similar font treatment, and then around that have it read the full 'Mozilla Developer Network' in the white font treatment...perhaps at the top half of the circle and place a URL for the lower half. I think there is room to play with this one, if this look is something you guys think is worth going ahead with. Overall it would still retain that 50s radio look, but may be a better solution for readability...just a thought."
An initial deliverable on this bug from creative would be to evaluate our requirements and ask for any additional info if anything is un-clear. Hoping to get some sort of feedback this week?
Thanks Jeff. I agree with all your thoughts above...I guess my main thought at this point is that, while we're at it, we may want to take this opportunity to change the MDN logo altogether. You, Stormy and the other DevEngage folks have a better sense of how much brand equity we've build up in the current logo than I do, but my feeling is that now (or now-ish) would be a good time to change it. We're trying to move away from the dino as the user-facing symbol of an innovative tech organization in other places, and if there's anywhere where we don't want to be represented by an extinct animal it's probably MDN. I know this might require further discussion on your end, but that's my recommendation. If you guys are up for exploring that, let's talk about the options, direction and timing sometime soon.
Personally, I see the dino as Mozilla as a whole. Is there a general initiative to move away from it? ANd maybe some mor reading on the thoughts and ideas/options?
(In reply to Robert Nyman from comment #5) > Personally, I see the dino as Mozilla as a whole. Is there a general > initiative to move away from it? Yep, we've been making a concerted effort to move away from the dino as an active symbol of Mozilla for a couple of years now. You'll still see a silhouette of the dino in places that are heavily focused on community usage (i.e., MozCamp collateral) but our traditional dino has been pretty much phased out everywhere but on MDN. > ANd maybe some mor reading on the thoughts and ideas/options? What did you have in mind? Do you mean ideas/options for what might replace the dino here?
For reference, here is the breadth of the recent work Matt has done for us: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/44296964/mdn_shirts/index.html **DISCLAIMER** IMO the Dino logo is piece of modern art with high emotional impact for Mozillians: http://www.flickr.com/photos/intothefuzz/2555982727/ For the Dino, I think it is find and dandy to excise it from corporate and user-facing content, but I would be reticent to stop using it from developer-oriented or community-oriented stuff. Back to the pressing issue, yes we want new art that expresses the word-mark 'Mozilla Developer Network'. The questions is whether we continue working with Matt as a contractor or start a process with creative. There are outstanding issues with Matt's work that I addressed earlier that I think we can work through, or base new work on. People on the devengage team really seemed to respond to the strong art deco look.
> …but our traditional dino has been pretty much phased out everywhere but on MDN. I see. Personally, I like the dino but can also live without it. I do think, however, that we need to contemplate just how strong awareness and recognition it has in the web developer community. > What did you have in mind? Do you mean ideas/options for what might > replace the dino here? Yes, it would be interesting to read up on suggestions and line of thinking to get a bigger grasp of how we want to be perceived and what we're aiming for, and also to see how we consider other symbols and how we believe they will have as strong connections as the dino.
To be clear, I'm not against removing the dino, for example Matt's art-deco-style logo does not include the dino. I just think we need to be careful that what we come up with for use in developer marketing is something that serves us marketing to developers, as opposed to something that fits with the look of the rest of the organization. I'm sure we can find a balance in there somewhere.
To add a timing note, we have a couple of "MDN tours" coming up. A series of events in Latin America, Europe and Asia. It would be good to have the new logo and/or the old logo with the wording on it by the Europe and Asia events. (Around the corresponding MozCamp times.) John, when you say creating a new logo for MDN, do you mean completely different? Like with a new animal or shape?
Thanks all for the thoughts. At some point soon it might be easier to take this conversation into a meeting rather than continue in the bug, but I'll try to address points from the last few comments here. - I have a great deal of personal fondness for the dino and have a very deep appreciation for what that artwork means to the history of Mozilla and the feelings of many Mozillians who have strong connections to it. (in fact, that's my Flickr page linked in comment #7 and I used to blog about this topic pretty regularly) - but, the challenge is that Mozilla's brand is built around the idea of us being an organization that's innovating for the good of the web and all the people who use it. Given that perspective, using an angry-looking carnivorous extinct dinosaur is pretty incongruous. We've done multiple brand research surveys and the overwhelming result each time we presented the dino was that a) people didn't have any inherent recognition of what it stood for and b) when people learned about Mozilla's status as a non-profit, they were confused by the use of a dinosaur as a mascot. - regarding developers' affection for the dino, we should probably draw a distinction between developers in the Mozilla community and developers as a whole. I would definitely agree that many developers close to Mozilla like the dino, but in the surveys mentioned above we had a track specifically for developers and at that broader level they didn't demonstrate any greater connection to the dino than the general public. - the current thinking around the dino is that we don't want to jettison it completely, given the history and meaning involved, but we do want to limit its use to the most relevant areas. For example, the dino is no longer part of the design theme on mozilla.org, but it remains in use in places that are more directly targeted at Mozillians (both paid and volunteer). It's part of the MozCamp identity (https://wiki.mozilla.org/EU_MozCamp_2011) and will be used in similar ways in upcoming redesigns of the Air Mozilla and Mozillians sites. I guess the thing we need to figure out here is where MDN fits into this continuum. - re: comment #9, I agree that we shouldn't market to developers in the same way we would market to other users. But, I would assert pretty strongly that it's important that all types of marketing fit into overall message we're trying to present. Anyway, that's a lot of background (and apologies for blowing up the scope of this bug!). Given your short-term needs (noted in comment #10), I'd suggest creating a lockup similar to the header of the MDN site that you can use at upcoming events, and then revisit the logo in general in a less time-sensitive context. (And yes, by "new logo" I mean rethinking how we'd want to represent MDN visually...there are plenty of cool possibilities, so I'm sure we'd wind up with something great.) Thoughts? (Particularly about specific action items in that last paragraph.)
I am good moving away from the dino assuming we get another awesome logo. :)
(In reply to Stormy Peters from comment #12) > I am good moving away from the dino assuming we get another awesome logo. :) All projects come with a 100% awesomeness guarantee!
John, Thanks for clarifying and going into detail: I really appreciate it! And since it comes with a guarantee, I'm all for it now. :-) On the action items, I think: 1. Design a logo where it actually states Mozilla Developer Network and not just MDN (I think just MDN in itself will be even more bland without the dino). 2. I'd love to have meetings and discussions how to move forward in the greater scheme of things after that!
Thanks Robert. Re: point #1, could we just create a lockup of the current logo that has the words written out in full next to it? (Much like the treatment at the top of the MDN site?) That would be a short-term solution, but would work for the upcoming events. Re: point #2, yes, that will be good and you can definitely be in the loop on that! Stormy, do you have a particular timeframe in mind for that conversation? Q2?
(In reply to John Slater from comment #15) > Thanks Robert. > > Re: point #1, could we just create a lockup of the current logo that has the > words written out in full next to it? (Much like the treatment at the top of > the MDN site?) That would be a short-term solution, but would work for the > upcoming events. Ok, let's do that, at least to take a look at it. The alternative is ( as originally stated ) to engage Matt to iterate on his design and use that. That choice would be to go with something that is inconsistent with our other stuff, which I take it is not preferred?
(In reply to John Slater from comment #15) > > Re: point #2, yes, that will be good and you can definitely be in the loop > on that! Stormy, do you have a particular timeframe in mind for that > conversation? Q2? Hi John, Jeff is running with this one so I will defer to him.
John, yes we could try something as simple as that to begin with and see how it looks. Also, I personally really do like Matt's design, but if we go that route we need to go all the way now/soon.
Thanks guys. I'm on PTO today, but will circle back on Monday and we can figure out how to proceed in more detail. Having a better understanding of when all this is really needed will help us resource it appropriately. Usually Sean Martell dose our logos, although I agree that Matt has done good work for MDN so far (I'm quite familiar with Matt and his work...he's done freelance work for us on a number of non-MDN projects as well). Whatever we do will be a) consistent with our other stuff and b) awesome, so it'll be good. More soon!
I would love to have a generic logo of an MDN *mascot* hugging/wrapping a circular MDN graphic. (see http://blog.seanmartell.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/logo_0064_65.png, http://blog.seanmartell.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/logo_0065_66.png, http://blog.seanmartell.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/logo_0027_28.png) I thought we should do the dino, but if want to move away from that I would love another mascot - a gecko, a spider, a robot, something. Then we could make circular graphics for HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Addons, B2G, etc. and "wrap" the MDN mascot around them too.
Hey guys. Sorry about the slow reply here. I caught up with Sean about this today and we're excited to get something going. I'd like to have a quick call to cover what's needed, figure out schedule, etc. Who from the MDN team should be there? I'll set it up for next week.
Personally, currently I'm in Argentina and next week I (some of us) will be on a MDN Tour in South America: http://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/04/mozilla-hack-day-on-tour-heading-south/ So hopefully the week after instead?
(In reply to John Slater from comment #21) .. > I'd like to have a quick call to cover what's needed, figure out schedule, > etc. Who from the MDN team should be there? I'll set it up for next week. I'd be happy to join. More importantly I *believe* the MDN product manager is starting Monday, so they should obviously be driving this project from our team.
Ali Spivak, our new MDN product manager, starts today!
Thanks guys. Does anyone else need to be in this meeting besides Jeff, Robert and Ali? I'll plan on setting up this meeting for early next week, so please let me know.
Just so it is logged somewhere, we will also need to update the promote buttons: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/promote
Good point Ali. We'll probably need to spin that off into a separate bug when the time comes to work on it, to make sure it's being properly tracked.
Quick notes from our meeting earlier (Ali, Jeff, Sean...please amend or add to as needed: - general agreement that moving away from the dino as the base of the logo is the way to go - general agreement that the words Mozilla Developer Network need to appear as part of the presentation...if not actually part of the logo, at least in as wordmark in a close lockup with the logo - general agreement that we should involve the community in the decision making process...potentially helping us refine a preferred direction once we have a concept (vs voting on a winner, which in my experience can be problematic) - general agreement that the end result must and will be awesome Next steps: - Sean is going to post some sketches that he did back in 2006 to see if there are any worthwhile starting points to build on - Ali & Jeff to post some inspirational keywords we can use as a reference, mainly focused on answering the questions "what MDN values should this logo represent" and "how do we want people to feel when they see the logo?" - need to have a follow-up conversation about timing and rollout Thanks all...am looking forward to this!
Another place where the robot-dino is used is in the PromoteJS campaign: http://promotejs.com/ Neither "Mozilla" nor "MDN" appears in that artwork, but the badges point back to MDN. PromoteJS was organized by Chris Williams of JSConf; he worked with Jay on using the logo, and may have used Matt for the artwork.
Thanks for the summary of the meeting!
I would like to see the logo align with the concepts of building a better web, community participation, and openness. Some keywords (thanks John K) Contribute Open Community Learn Teach Share Improve (You) Drive Web
Assignee: tshahian → smartell
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 13 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
sorry! closed by mistake.
Status: RESOLVED → REOPENED
Resolution: FIXED → ---
Status: REOPENED → ASSIGNED
checking in - is this still something on the priority list?
Yep! I just talked to Sean about this yesterday - still definitely on our radar.
pinging this bug again... since we are going to be launching the new MDN wiki platform soon (next week), it seems like it would make sense to roll out a new logo not too long afterwards... The MDN team will be in Toronto Aug 5-10, maybe we could grab some time with Sean to discuss?
Thanks for getting this going again! Yes, that sounds like a great time to discuss with Sean (and I'd like to dial in).
Got totally caught up in planning last week - I'll set up a call this week.
(In reply to ali spivak from comment #37) > Got totally caught up in planning last week - I'll set up a call this week. When you invite, can you please include me? If I can, I'd love to be a part of the meeting!
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 13 years ago → 12 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
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