Mozilla to Rebrand Itself, and You're Invited to Help

Mozilla has been involved in reinventing itself for some time now. Known for the venerable Firefox browser, it has made forays into several other open source arenas, and was even known for its dalliance with the smartphone business. The company is currently involved in a broad rebranding effort, and the way it is going about rebranding comes directly from the open source playbook.

The company has launched an "open design" blog, where is publishing content and hosting discussions ont its rebrand. Here are more details on the reinvention of Mozilla. 

According to the company:

"We’re updating our brand identity using Mozilla open source principles, and everyone’s invited. In this, our Creative Strategy phase, we welcome your ideas for directions Mozilla might explore to present itself anew to the world. Comment or post a link to an example of open design done well. We're priming the pump with 7 thematic pathways of our own."

 What does Mozilla mean by thematic pathways? Basically, the company is inviting thoughts on whether it ought to be positioned as a champion of openness in general, a "fighter," and more.

There are some directions the company will not head in. "We are not crowd-sourcing the new identity and we will not resort to voting," leaders report. "While we have nothing against either of these approaches to design in the modern world, we feel that we will get better results from the call and response of design and review. We’ll avoid re-opening phases of work we have already passed so that we may keep the project on track."

The post from Mozilla summarizes the rebranding goal as follows:

"Ideally Mozilla will have a brand that better matches the work we do in the world. In reality, the outcome is uncertain. This kind of open brand identity design has never been done before at this scale. As a global design community, we will learn where this process works and where it breaks down, and we’ll adapt to designing in a more connected, brand-centric world."

OStatic will follow up on Mozilla's transformation.