Developing the MDN brand
As Chris Blizzard blogged about a few months ago, we’re in the process of creating the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) to help unify a diverse, global developer community and give them a strong identity within the ever-growing Mozilla universe. The MDN will serve key developer segments including those working on the Web, Add-ons, Mobile and Applications. With early feedback and an initial roadmap, the Mozilla developer marketing team has been busy executing on a number of projects to help make the MDN a reality in 2010.
We have made a lot of progress this year with the redesigned Hacks blog and web developer outreach, but we haven’t spent a lot of time discussing what the MDN will look like in terms of structure or brand. We know it may take a while to figure out the right structure for our developer communities, but we can definitely make a huge impact early on by defining and developing the MDN brand. Since MDN will serve as the official Mozilla “developer brand”, creating a strong identity is an important step in establishing the new name and concept within the Mozilla community. That is why we have kicked off the logo design process with Studio Number One (SNO) and plan to share the concepts with you soon. If you’re interested in learning more about the process, check out the MDN logo design brief we provided SNO to start things off.
For those not familiar with the origins of the Mozilla dino logo, it was created in 1998 by Shepard Fairey and his BLK/MRKT design firm. Most people know him for his more recent Obama “HOPE” poster, but the Mozilla community has been familiar with his work for years.
Fairey made a huge impact in the early days of the Mozilla project and his work is evident in the original Mozilla website design, many mozilla.org t-shirts, the Mozilla “hack” brand (which we borrowed for the Hacks web developer blog) and of course the Mozilla dino that lives on as the symbol for Mozilla today. I am very excited that we are working with his current design firm SNO to create a new identify for the MDN.
We will have a set of MDN logo concepts later this week and I will blog more about them so that everyone has a chance to share their thoughts. The Mozilla developer marketing team has given the SNO team three unique design directions to explore after our initial round of brainstorming and I can’t wait to see what they come up.
The MDN logo design project will be followed by a complete redesign of the developer.mozilla.org website in preparation for rebranding the site from MDC to MDN. While we may be changing the look and feel of the website, the awesome documentation we currently have available on MDC isn’t going anywhere. All the great developer notes, tutorials and web reference pages will be accessible from the /docs section of the MDN website. The community will have a chance to provide their feedback during the MDN website design project as well, so stay tuned.
For more information about our MDN plans, you can track the various projects and programs on our wiki: https://wiki.mozilla.org/MDN
I will use this opportunity to congratulate and thank all of the Mozilla group for having created an excellent browser.
This being said, I would like to add a word of caution for your next development stage. Do not make the error of going too fancy (Think Toyota) You need to appeal to all users, including the more conservative business and senior sections or you may jam yourself exclusively into a geek niche.
What I feel is badly needed at this point in a readily identifiable “contact us” section in case of trouble. You have partly addressed it with your – for hire – volunteers and they do a very good job. I especially like the brief intro on their background, it helps to select the tech support relevant to the problem. Just streamline it and make it easier to find, not every user is an Internet high-flyer.
Best wishes for your next move
I will check out the archives pages. Thanks for letting me know.