Mozilla fox up its designs

Mozilla is looking to change the design of the Firefox logo and it is seeking help -- which is just as well, because the designs it has come up with so far are awful.

The company says that it is looking to "evolve the Firefox brand" as it develops new apps and services beyond the browser it is currently associated with. The aim is to come up with a new branding system that can "embrace all of the Firefox products in the pipeline and those still in the minds of our Emerging Technologies group", and it wants to know what you think.

In a blog post about the new design project, Mozilla says: "As an icon, that fast fox with a flaming tail doesn't offer enough design tools to represent this entire product family. Recoloring that logo or dissecting the fox could only take us so far. We needed to start from a new place".

So far, the company has been working with product and brand designers, and has come up with "two design system approaches" which you can see above. Now it's over to the likes of you and I because -- as it has done before -- Mozilla is now looking for feedback. Although, the company stresses, "we are not crowdsourcing the answer", "there'll be no voting" and "no one is being asked to design anything for free".

At the moment, the only way to give feedback is to comment on the blog post, and Mozilla points out:

Extreme caveat: Although the products and projects are real, these design systems are still a work of fiction. Icons are not final. Each individual icon will undergo several rounds of refinement, or may change entirely, between now and their respective product launches. Our focus at this point is on the system.

In many ways, the current set of design suggestions continues Mozilla's move towards a more stylized look. But by seemingly trying to marry a retro feel with a forward-looking aesthetic, the designs fall flat. Thankfully, the company stresses that "icons are not final".

Please, if any of you have even the vaguest smidgen of a design sensibility, get in touch and do what you can to steer the design away from the route Mozilla is currently looking to go down. There's still time to influence things and help come up with a set of cohesive designs that better "reinforce the speed, safety, reliability, wit, and innovation that Firefox stands for".

Go and tell Mozilla what you think.