…but it’s worth mentioning that, just in case, we now have a much snazzier site outage notification:

David, Rhian and I are in the process of overhauling the Mozilla Store with lots of new merch and a totally new site design. That’s all coming later in the summer (Firefox shirts will be the hot fashion statement on campus this fall), but for now here’s a sneak peak at some of the new items:

(Photo by David Rolnitzky)

Special thanks to our fabulous models Matthew Zeier, Jonas Sicking and Rishi Mallik.

Every major Firefox update is referred to by a code name during its pre-release period. The names come from major parks around the world…Firefox 1.5 was Deer Park, Firefox 2 was Bon Echo, and Firefox 3 is Gran Paradiso.

Gran Paradiso is well underway, of course, so it’s time to give it a visual identity of its own (for comparison, here’s the Bon Echo identity). The name evokes images of travel from an earlier, more glamorous era so we decided to center our campaign around a vintage travel theme.

The first step was to bring our fictional place called Gran Paradiso to life in the form of a poster by artist Steve Forney. The final art is below (makes Gran Paradiso look like a pretty pleasant place to hang out, if you ask me)…we’ve printed up posters, created desktop wallpaper and are planning other surprises for the next few months.

One really important thing to keep in mind is that this is strictly an internal campaign, meaning it’s purely for the enjoyment of everyone in the Mozilla community who’s working on the Gran Paradiso project. It’s most definitely not intended to be promotional or customer-facing in any way.

So, without further ado, welcome to Gran Paradiso (click for a larger image):

Ok, not exactly an obscure band, but this is a pretty obscure song so I figured it was worth posting. It’s Radiohead’s live cover of “Cinnamon Girl”, one of my favorite songs.

They do a good job of it - it starts off especially strong - and if not for a few flubs here and there it’d move up a few notches (then again, it’s sort of reassuring in a weird way to know that Radiohead botches notes every now and then). It’s from something called the EMI Canal Promo, although I couldn’t track down much more information about when or where it was recorded (if you know, please post a comment).

Radiohead - “Cinnamon Girl”

Doug Turner is cooking up some really cool high-tech stuff with Project Joey, so it was fun to take his concept and turn it into a real website.

The basic idea is that you can use Firefox to mark your favorite content from around the web (text, pictures, etc) and have it all aggregated on your cell phone and personalized web page. Even better, you just have to mark it once and it will automatically update on your phone and web page as the content changes (you could select the top headlines on CNN, for example).

We started with just a blank page, so it was all a little abstract, but our designer, Henry Brown, did a really nice job of turning Doug’s thoughts into something concrete. The idea was for the site to be very clean and simple, but with a slightly futuristic touch.

Joey is still a work in progress, but the screenshot below shows where it’s going. If you’re feeling cutting edge and curious definitely visit the live Joey site (using Firefox), download the extension and play around with it.

Lately I’ve been working with Jay Patel and the good folks on the Mozilla QA team on developing a brand identity for their soon-to-be-redesigned quality.mozilla.org (QMO) site. Like all Mozilla projects, QMO depends heavily on community involvement, so we thought it would be appropriate to put the final decision in your hands. In other words, it’s voting time.

So, if you feel like making your voice heard, click here and vote!

To get you in the right frame of mind, here are the options. Each option contains a logo, as well as two secondary elements that will be used elsewhere on the site (and possibly on other stuff like t-shirts, etc):

Option 1:

Option 2:

Lastly, thanks to Rubber Design for creating these options (as well as plenty of other good ones that didn’t make the final cut).

Over the weekend I decided that it would be fun to occasionally supplement this blog’s mostly Mozilla content with some interesting MP3s from the vaults. The inaugural edition is from a mid-80s band out of Cleveland called the Mice. It’s a pretty awesome high-energy blast, with some great angry Reagan-era lyrics as well (that are still quite relevant today, of course).

So, check it out and enjoy with my compliments. And if you like this song, you can buy an entire album of their stuff right here.

The Mice - “Not Proud of the USA”

There’s a new Mozilla blog in town…the Mozilla Blog. To quote the blog itself, it’ll be “a 360 degree look at the goings-on within the Mozilla community, including news, opinions, events, tips & tricks and more.”

From a design perspective, we tried to integrate the blog pretty closely with the existing look at Mozilla.com. I see those blue & orange gradients as a strong online brand element for us, so it made sense to keep them going here. We wanted it to have a distinctly “by the people” feel, so each post will be accompanied by a little avatar representing the poster. Hopefully that will give it a nice, friendly look, especially as the photos build up over time.

My esteemed colleague Mary Colvig will be the blog’s editor, and it should have some good stuff in it. Also, thanks to Boris Anthony for bringing his WordPress skills to this project.

T-shirts are big at Mozilla. In my three months here, I’ve already worked on 9 or 10 t-shirt design projects. Most of these are for the upcoming relaunch of the Mozilla Store (stay tuned for details!) and will be available for sale soon, but others are more specialized.

The shirt shown below is one of the more specialized ones - basically you have to be a Mozilla intern or campus rep to get one - but I liked the way it turned out so I thought I’d share it. The copy on the back reads “Spreading Firefox One Planet at a Time”.

Thanks to Stephen Lowe for the cool design.

Ok, I promised myself I would put up a few more Mozilla posts before I started sidetracking, but I need to give a quick shout-out to how insanely good Arcade Fire is. I was fortunate enough to see them last Saturday at the Greek Theater in Berkeley and it was pretty sensational. If these guys roll through your town, definitely don’t miss ‘em.

Here’s a sample clip (not from my show) to whet your appetite:
Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies)

More Mozilla stuff coming soon…