A group of us have been working on the Mozilla.com redesign for a few months now, and I’m happy to report that it’s definitely on track to launch at the same time as the upcoming Firefox 3 release. But, it’s also at that point where we really need some fresh eyes to look it over and make sure everything is working properly…which is where you come in.

Next Monday we’re going to begin what I’m calling a “semi-public” beta test of the new site. It’s ‘public’ in the sense that everyone is invited (and encouraged) to participate, but it’s ’semi’ in the sense that you’ll have to email me to get the username and password to the staging site. Here’s how it will work:
1. Email siteredesign@mozilla.com if you want to be part of the beta test.
2. On Monday, I’ll send out details about how to access the staging site, plus some info about known issues, filing bugs, etc.

It’s as simple as that…thanks in advance for your help!

Last fall, I did a short blog post about how we created a “Powered by Mozilla” logo for use by organizations whose products are based on Mozilla technology, and was pleasantly surprised at the level of interest that it received. The only problem was that my original post left pretty much all of the key details, like what it actually means to be “powered by”, unresolved.

We haven’t forgotten about this, though, and lately Harvey Anderson, Paul Kim, Tiffney Mortensen and I have been working on an initial framework of how the “powered by” program might work. Tiffney has a much more thorough explanation of our thoughts so far over at her blog, but the general idea is to set some basic criteria for whether or not a product is truly powered by Mozilla, and then let the community enforce (for lack of a better word) these standards. We very much want this to be a community project, and broad participation is essential to making it work.

Our thoughts so far are definitely just a first step, and we’re counting on community participation to refine and improve them. For lots more info on all this, plus some suggestions on how you can get involved, be sure to check out Tiffney’s post on the subject.

It seems that the Hubble telescope has discovered the Firefox logo floating around in deep, deep space (around the star V838 Monocerotis if you’re keeping track). Polvi, if you’re behind this somehow my hat definitely goes off to you.

Our recently completed Firefox 3 T-shirt Design Contest was one of the most fun projects I’ve worked on since joining Mozilla…it was tremendously gratifying to turn our brand marks over to the community and see so much creativity and enthusiasm in return. Out of the many truly excellent submissions we received, though, the work of Tracie Andrews (aka “egirluk”) really stood out, so it was no surprise when one of her designs was voted the overwhelming contest winner.

I recently emailed Tracie a few questions to find out more about her background, inspirations and approach to the contest. Here’s what she had to say:

1. How did you originally get interested in design?
I’ve always loved art and computers, and always wanted to combine the two. I did a Fine Art degree in 1998 but didn’t get my first computer until 2000. It was then that I discovered a magazine dedicated to digital arts, and that was it. I still dabble with paint and canvas from time to time, but I much prefer what I do now. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.

2. How long have you ben designing professionally? What kinds of work do you specialize in?
It’s only been recently in the last few months that I have started designing professionally, and I specialise mainly in illustration and graphic design.

3. How would you describe your style? What are your influences?
To be honest, I don’t have a style - I prefer not to be constrained by that limitation. I’m continually learning and evolving as a designer and I think that is reflected in my work. To me the subject matter/brief dictates the style, not the other way around. As for influences, I’m influenced by everything! TV, cartoons, books, news, fabrics, ads, packaging – everything, I’m always looking at things and seeing the creative aspect!

4. What’s your creative process like? When you found out about the t-shirt contest, how did you approach the work?
When faced with a brief, I like to research everything about the project. Once I have all the information, then I can proceed with sketches and then start work on the computer. I always leave colour choices until last. When I found out about the contest, I searched for everything I could about Firefox and Mozilla, its history, and manifesto. Once I had that information, the designs sort of came together themselves!

5. You were one of the most prolific designers in the entire contest. Of all the designs you submitted, which was your personal favorite and why?
Thank you! My personal favourite was laptop-design. With each design I tried to push them as far as they could go, without losing the ‘message’ (I wasn’t always successful!). This particular design is my favourite because it incorporates all the things I love about Firefox, particularly how Firefox can be customized to each user, so my browser is as unique as I am!

6. Lastly, what’s your favorite thing about Firefox?
Lots of things! I love the customisation aspect, the add-ons and extensions, so I can tailor my browser to my needs. I love the tabs, which makes everything so easier, no more having lots of windows open. And, the fact that the software is relatively small, never crashes and is unobtrusive - oh, and if my operating system does crash, the ‘restore session’ is invaluable.

***
Tracie’s winning shirt will be available in the Mozilla Store in the next few weeks. Thanks again to everyone who participated in the contest, and stay tuned for more info on how we’d like to “open source” the rest of the design submissions to make them more widely available.

It’s been quite an adventure since his flying saucer-battling origin, but now that the final Firefox 3 beta has been released everyone’s favorite open source robot has retired to a comfortable and triumphant life of adoration from a grateful populace:

As it turns out, a lot of the action has been taking place around the (fictional, of course) city of Gran Paradiso. Although it’s nice to see it rebuilt after the carnage, it does change the context a bit knowing that there’s a gleaming modern urban area right around the corner from that quaint seaside village:

This entire robot series has been immensely fun, and huge thanks are due to Nobox for their concepts and creativity throughout. Also, props to Mr. Mike Beltzner for figuring out how to tie it all back in to Gran Paradiso in the end.

Coming up next: a variety of robotless designs related to the Firefox 3 launch.

The new and improved addons.mozilla.org is a huge step forward, and although Basil, Madhava and Morgamic have already written excellent posts about it, I thought I’d chime in with a few quick thoughts.

As something the other browsers either couldn’t or wouldn’t duplicate, the volume and diversity of add-ons has always been one of Firefox’s competitive advantages and have been detailed accordingly as a key part in our overall communications strategy. However, the old AMO site wasn’t the easiest thing to navigate, especially for new users who needed a more gentle introduction to that world. The redesigned site (along with the new add-ons manager in Firefox 3) is much more accessible and makes our job of spreading the word about how to customize your browser much easier.

From a design perspective, a couple of key issues we had to solve were 1) how to make individual add-ons as discoverable as possible and 2) how closely should the site’s navigation be integrated with Mozilla.com (the old AMO site shared a top nav bar with Mozilla.com, but some of the links were different…a major UI headache). As you can see from this early mockup, the original answers were 1) tabs with a secondary search bar and 2) keep the close ties to Mozilla.com.

However, after more thought we introduced the more prominent search field and replaced the full header navigation with a small Mozilla.com tab off to the side. There’s also a much clearer list of the categories down the left side of the page and a menu to access Thunderbird, SeaMonkey and Sunbird add-ons at the top:

This redesigned site is the product of the hard work of dozens of people across the Mozilla community. On the visual side, special thanks go to Madhava Enros for his amazingly detailed wireframes and Henry Brown for his graphic design work.

Admittedly the Firefox 3 betas offer a bit more than just cool robot art, but I have to mention that the first run page in tonight’s Beta 4 release brings us the latest chapter in the ongoing robot saga. Now that the scene has shifted to a final battle in space, it’s all building to a big finish…stay tuned!

It’s been awhile since I blogged about the Mozilla.com site redesign, so it feels like time for an update on our recent progress. In order to provide some context, I’ll also take a step back and give a little background about the process and how we’ve approached this project.

First, why redesign Mozilla.com?
* To support the Firefox 3 release…we did the same for the launch of versions 1.5 and 2.0.
* To provide new and improved content about both Firefox and Mozilla.
* To make sure the site continues to evolve and improve along with our organization, our expanding userbase and the Mozilla Project as a whole.

The process so far:
* September 2007: We began soliciting internal suggestions for design agencies.
* October 2007: We sent RFPs (requests for proposals) to six agencies that seemed like good potential fits.
* November 2007: Based on their design abilities, understanding of our brand and history of working on sites with heavy community involvement, we selected the Royal Order and immediately began giving them massive amounts of background info about Mozilla.
* December 2007: The Royal Order created a detailed information architecture plan and did some initial design exploration.
* January 2008: Worked with the Royal Order to refine the design direction; they began designing the site in earnest.

Design background:
The overall design goal is that the site should embody Mozilla’s unique nature, while still being very usable, informative, etc (read more about our design objectives). Having said that, it’s also important that the design not overshadow the key content goals of driving Firefox downloads and educating people about Mozilla. Plus, the site also needs to be easily localized, highly accessible and compliant with Web standards.

After sifting through people’s reactions to the initial design explorations, Paul and I realized that, although the basic layouts were quite solid, they were still lacking a main visual element that met the above design goals. Specifically, we decided that using photography as the main element would make it too difficult to fully represent the global scope of Mozilla, so we and the Royal Order began to focus on illustration options instead.

With regard to illustration style, we wanted hand-created elements rather than slick, vector art in order to represent the fact that Mozilla software is created by a community of people around the world rather being than a faceless corporate entity. The Royal Order recommended an illustration studio called the Delicious Design League, whose style really complemented this concept, and things began to come together.

Our somewhat ambitious goal for the illustrations was that they should abstractly reflect the good things about the Web itself…things like connectivity, collaboration, creativity, etc. That’s certainly not an easy task, but the designers and illustrators have come up with several different concepts - all based around metaphors for networks - that support this really well. The final site will incorporate a few of these, one of which is shown below.

This mockup of the homepage will still receive a few more tweaks before it’s all said and done, but it’s a good sneak peak of what’s to come. As noted earlier, the illustration of the tree is meant to suggest the power and possibility of the Web, as well as the way Mozilla works. And the various handmade elements, such as the pencil-drawn lines and background shadings are all meant to evoke the grassroots, people-powered nature of Mozilla itself.

What next?
The design work is still in progress, and we’re busy creating some cool new content like a detailed Firefox features page. From there, we move on to development with our friends at silverorange (who have been closely involved in the entire process), localization (for more on this, definitely check out Pascal’s recent post on the subject) and QA - all with the goal having the site ready for the upcoming Firefox 3 launch.

There’s still lots more work to be done, and I’ll have plenty more to say about the design and the specifics of the new site later. In the meantime, thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more!

Adding more open source flavor to our design process is one of my top goals, so I’m excited to announce that we launched the Firefox 3 T-Shirt Contest today.

Our challenge to the Mozilla community (and beyond) is to create the coolest, most interesting Firefox 3-inspired t-shirt design (if you need inspiration, here’s some info on suggested themes). The winner will be determined by a public vote and will have his/her work sold in the Mozilla Store as our official Firefox 3 t-shirt (note: all Store proceeds benefit the Mozilla Foundation).

With Operation Firefox last fall, there were some complaints that it wasn’t international enough (due to some legal restrictions around liability issues), so we took that feedback and made sure the t-shirt contest would be more globally accessible. We’re excited to see the range of styles we get as a result.

There are plenty of other details to cover, but rather than list them all here I’ll just direct you to the official contest page set up on Spread Firefox by Tara Shahian. It should answer most questions, but definitely let us know if there’s anything we missed. The key thing to know for now is that design submissions are due on March 16th, so get those creative juices flowing and send us your best stuff!

There are still many unsolved mysteries, but his return for the Firefox 3 Beta 3 brings a few more clues about his origins and mission. You guys had some truly excellent theories about the beta 2 page, so I’d love to hear your take on his newest adventures…please leave your thoughts in the comments section (alas, no contest this time though).

Where does he go from here? That remains to be seen…

Once again, thanks to Nobox for the very cool illustration.