Old School Design + New Age Technology
Chris Blizzard and the Mozilla evangelism team recently launched a site called hacks.mozilla.org, devoted to showing off a variety of Firefox 3.5 demos over the next 35 days. Although the demos are undoubtedly extremely cool, my personal favorite thing about the site is the throwback-style design by Mozilla Labs’ Sean Martell.
When we were planning this site, our goal was to update Shepard Fairey’s classic “hack” artwork in a way that retained the original charm while reducing the “happy worker” iconography that understandably rubbed people the wrong way (much like with our “Mozilla: 10 Years” piece from last year). I’m really happy with how it turned out (big thanks to Sean).
The most exciting thing for me about all this is the realization that, just as Mozilla has built up a rich history of software development over the past decade, we’re also establishing a very nice visual design tradition. It’s a great sign for where we are as an organization that we can both draw on ‘classic’ styles that hold a lot of instant meaning for people while also creating new favorites like the Firefox robot or the mozilla.com illustrations. It’s a good place to be, and bodes well for a lot more coolness coming in the future.
June 9th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
No doubt that hacks.mozilla.org has a cool design. Great site too.
Hey aren’t you supposed to be on vacation?
June 9th, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Nice, the site looks awesome. And I’m glad the all-hands badge design came in handy.
June 18th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
[...] is such a powerful form of communication, and over the past 11 years we’ve built up such a large body of iconic Mozilla imagery, that building a true community around it seems like the next logical step. Helping make this a [...]