Building communities is a big part of what Mozilla is all about, and key to our success as an organization.  We have dedicated communities that contribute to nearly every aspect of Mozilla – from software development, to extensions, to localization, to marketing, and more – but an area that’s traditionally lacked an organized community is visual design. And because art is such a powerful form of communication, we’re harnessing that with the Creative Collective.

Mozilla actually has a long history with community design. Successful past projects such as the Firefox 3 t-shirt, Mozilla Mexico logo design contest and Personas are just a sampling of our community’s creative energy – and demonstrate the growing level of interest among people who are eager to contribute.

On the Creative Collective site, artists can create personal profiles, share their work in a public gallery, connect and collaborate with others from around the world, and much more. There’s also a variety of social features, such as a system of achievement badges, to make the experience more fun for everyone.

An important feature that’s not yet available (but will be added soon) is the Design Challenge, which will prompt members to submit design solutions based around a particular theme.  Although the feature hasn’t been formally introduced to the site, we’re already reaching out to artists to help support Mozilla Service Week with creative designs that inspire action. If you’re looking for an initial way to get involved, be sure to check that out.

As noted earlier, the site is still in beta so we’re eager to hear your feedback. If you have suggestions on how to improve the site, please don’t hesitate to share them with us. We’ll be making tweaks and adding new features over time, and are counting on the community to help guide the project’s future direction. So, make sure to check back often, or follow our tweets, for updates.  Looking forward to seeing you on the Creative Collective!

This morning we announced the launch of the Mozilla Community Store, a new open source approach to our t-shirt creation process that allows anyone to submit their original designs and make them publicly available for purchase.

The Store gallery is comprised entirely of community-generated art from around the world, all of which can be fully customized through Zazzle — a leading on-demand retail platform offering customization tools to help you create products fitted to your unique personal style. The process is pretty straightforward and there are lots of options to choose from, including:

- Over 400 apparel products including basic t-shirts, sweatshirts, and tanks.
- Styles covering women, men, kids, and baby.
- Detailed size charts that range from XS – 6XL.
- A wide variety of shirt colors.
- Scaling and repositioning of the design on the shirt.
- Adding custom text and other images.
- And more!

The Mozilla Community Store was inspired by the Firefox 3 t-shirt design contest, which resulted in a large pool of really impressive designs and a demand to make more of them available for print. We’ve seeded the Store with 60 of the best submissions from the contest, and are excited to see the collection grow.

You can contribute designs at any time through the upload tool on the site. Send us high resolution PNGs or JPGs of your best work, and make sure to enter your name so that we can give you full credit. We encourage you to be creative, but design concepts should generally be based on: Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, Camino, Bugzilla, Sunbird or Lightning. Please read the Guidelines and FAQ for all the details.

In support of the launch, Zazzle is offering 20% off purchases through December 25th. Enter the special promo code MOZILLAMERCH at checkout for the discount…happy shopping!

The runners up were Kevin Weagle, Ali Riyaz, Mathew Anderson, and Brett Rex Cannell.

We received close to 2,000 submissions representing many hours of hard work from a global design community that came together on the Flickr contest group. Selecting the top 5 was a very challenging task as there were many great designs to choose from. We’re proud of the talent that has come through in support of Firefox and are looking into ways to “open source” these designs so that they are publicly available for print. Thanks again to everyone for your support and creative contributions throughout this process. Please join me in congratulating all the winners!

Please take a moment and help us select the official Firefox 3 t-shirt by voting for your favorite design on the Mozilla Store. Voting will end on Sunday March 30th at 11:59 PM (PST). We’re excited to see which design wins!

We’ve already received close to 1,200 submissions and have created a community of over 2,800 members on the Flickr contest group! There are many great designs in the image pool and we’re proud of the creative talent that has come through so far. The winning design, as chosen by the Mozilla community, will be featured in the Mozilla Store as the official Firefox 3 t-shirt.

Please make sure to read the submission and design guidelines on the contest website carefully when creating your artwork. I also encourage you to join the Flickr group FF3 T-Shirt Design Contest to view the current submissions and to get more detailed information about the contest posted on the discussion boards.

Thanks again and keep up the great work!

I recently joined the Mozilla team as a marketing coordinator, and I’m excited to announce our T-Shirt Design Contest to help promote the launch of Firefox 3! The winning design will have worldwide exposure as the official Firefox 3 T-Shirt, and be featured as an exclusive item in the Mozilla Store. This is a great opportunity for the community to get involved in our design process and to show off their creative talents to a global audience.

We’ve worked hard to make this contest as internationally accessible as possible, and we’re excited to see the wide range of design styles we get as a result!

* Submission deadline is Sunday March 16th
* First round: An internal team at Mozilla will review all submissions and select 5 finalists.
* Second round: These top 5 designs will be posted online for public voting. Voting is open to everyone.
* The winning design will become the official Firefox 3 T-Shirt and be featured in the Store. All 5 finalists will receive free T-shirts with the winning design, as well as other prizes.

Please visit the contest website for all the details. We’re looking forward to seeing what you come up with!