Call for an official Mozilla Sunbird theme

Nietzman · Post by **Nietzman** » July 7th, 2004, 7:05 am

susliks logo looks great, it's not perfect yet, it needs some more work, but it's most sure the best yet. It still doesnt fully match the Thunderbird and FireFox icons, but its getting close.

Mil's saturated icon looks great as well, (The original yellow used is not as appealing as the yellow in this version.) but I still feel that it shouldnt be a copy of the Thunderbird logo.

Flexer · Post by **Flexer** » July 7th, 2004, 7:49 am

suslik wrote:

Done in Illustrator from scratch. If someone approves of the idea, will continue working on it.

The *.ai is available upon request (231KB)

BTW, the best way to contact me, is to post in this forum. dotsa@hotmail.com is a black hole.

This is the best ! up to now. Yes it needs a little more edit but the idea and choise of colors is great !

suslik · Post by **suslik** » July 7th, 2004, 3:59 pm

A page about sunbirds for those who are interested.

There were some limiting factors to my icon decisions.
1. My idealogical template:
I would aimed for FF style icon - full frontal, but with flowing physicality. "Cute fox, checking out nifty things in the world" was a reason enough for my wife to try FF. ;)

2. Colors:
"Similar look" problem is systemic for "nifty" designs. For example, i like jeffhot's bird, but the composition looks similar to FF logo. (Orange flow around the bottom of blue object.)
The Icon has to scale well to 16 basic colors and still look good. <- very important. For example, FF uses Dark Blue, Light Blue, Yellow, Red = base colors. So, i cant really go crazy with painting bird in glitter.
Why Red Bird+White/Yello clock? Sun is... white/yellow. I had almost no other Choice for "light-emitting" bird. I tried blue (looks like TB), Green (didnt look as good as red.).

On the heals of suggestions...
3. Rotate clock like in TB icon:
In my (humble) opinion, isometrics is ugly in small icon sizes. Also see #!

4. Clock is too ugly:
Sorry for "old Europe" fetish. :) Bellow you will find a more modern look.

5. I dont like the date myself. (though it seems appropriate for calendar type apps doesn't it. :[ )

NOTE: Scaling was done lazily (bileniar resize in Photoshop)

I updates the 1st shots with some examples of scaling PLEASE HIT "RELOAD" IF PICTUREAS ARE NOT OF THE SAME STYLE

Gentlemen, pick your stones and start throwing them.

GrailKnight · Post by **GrailKnight** » July 7th, 2004, 9:36 pm

<img src="http://www.csulb.edu/~tkroutko/sunbird1.png" width="384" height="160" border="0" alt="" title="" />

markcarson · Post by **markcarson** » July 7th, 2004, 9:49 pm

<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunbird">Wikipedia page on Sunbirds</a> - just a single photo

<img src="http://en.wikipedia.org/upload/c/c7/Yellow-bellied-Sunbird.jpg">

And of course Goolge has pictures via Image search, but you to wade though a lot of junk to see much.

<img src="http://gianfvil.gamersrevolt.it/Sud%20Africa/Orange-breasted%20sunbird%202.jpg">
<img src="http://www.birdwatch.ph/images/birds/olive-backed-sunbird.jpg">
<img src="http://www.ne.jp/asahi/saito18/torizuki/kikou/oz/sunbird.jpg">
<img src="http://www.shoarns.com/Long-billed%20Green%20Sunbird.jpg">
<img src="http://www.paddleasia.com/images/newsletter/2000-07/sunbird-spiderhunter.jpg">

I would think that the logo should either try to look a real sunbird or just dispense with the idea of reality and be as creative as Pontiac was with their Firebird graphics back in the 1970s and Ford has always been with their Thunderbird logos.

jeffhot · Post by **jeffhot** » July 7th, 2004, 9:54 pm

<img src=http://www.jeffhottinger.com/Sunbird_latest_clock.jpg>

Haven't changed anything but the clock. Just showing the latest, still working on it. I may get a rough of another design done soon too.

suslik · Post by **suslik** » July 8th, 2004, 12:15 am

Haven't changed anything but the clock. Just showing the latest, still working on it. I may get a rough of another design done soon too.

In 32 and 16 pixels this icon looks very much like the FireFox icon. Is blue really the only color for a clock?

markcarson · Post by **markcarson** » July 8th, 2004, 3:03 am

"New" logo (remember that last one posted was preliminary - this one is much closer to final form)

<img src="http://markcarson.com/images/SunBird-6-200x200.png"> 200x200
<img src="http://markcarson.com/images/SunBird-6-48x48.png"> 48x48
<img src="http://markcarson.com/images/SunBird-6-32x32.png"> 32x32
<img src="http://markcarson.com/images/SunBird-6-24x24.png"> 24x24
<img src="http://markcarson.com/images/SunBird-6-16x16.png"> 16x16

Also at: <a href="http://MarkCarson.com/images/Logo.html">http://MarkCarson.com/images/Logo.html</a>

chrisw73 · Post by **chrisw73** » July 8th, 2004, 3:55 am

MarkCarson wrote:"New" logo (remember that last one posted was preliminary - this one is much closer to final form)
<img src="http://markcarson.com/images/SunBird-6-200x200.png"> 200x200

Like that one most!

Things TODO (IMHO):
- Make the bill more "sunbirdlike" (more like a sickle then a hook as it is)
- Give the bird round eyes to make it look more qute, for sunbirds, as all hummingbirds, look qute :-)
- Turn the clock to ten to ten an 25 seconds :-)
- Probably lift the tail a little bit...

...and finally make the colors matching the FF/TB Logos!

Overall: Great work, Mark!!!

Greetings,
Chris

FlashBanG · Post by **FlashBanG** » July 8th, 2004, 6:04 am

Mark:

Agree with Chris in that I like this one the most. Even at 16 x 16, the clock is recognizable..

Other than the stuff chris mentioned (especially the "match colors to FF/TB logos part), here are my suggestions:

-The clock looks very 3-D like, and great. Would it be possible to use some gradients (or whatever it is that you artists use :P ) to make the body and wings of the bird more that way?

- I think at bigger sizes, adding a slight hint of orange would give the bird a more striking look?

Love the fact that it looks like the Fx/Tb logos without mirroring the Tb one. :-)

BTW: Mostafa, et al: I hope that you guys plan on keeping the name Sunbird.. If you guys will change it in the future, then all this work would have gone to waste.. Fx and Tb did not havve their branding done until their product name was finalized..

also:

@mark:
The new find toolbar:

Came out with a couple of new up and down arrows... I believe they've updated the back/forward icons as well.. Any plans to use these, or stick with what we've got?

Edit:

False alarm regarding the new up/down arrows.. From asa's blog:

Note, please, that those icons were my creation and they are nowhere near as nice as what we'll eventually get from the real theme artists. They're just some placeholders that I threw together on short order so Blake could land the toolbar. I know they're not great and the blame lies here and not with the Winstripe theme.

so i guess we can wait for a little longer :P

Chris Cook · Post by **Chris Cook** » July 8th, 2004, 6:48 am

I guess the 28 day deadline is coming up. I'm going to be offline for a week so I won't be around when this deadline comes. Is there anything in particular that needs to be addressed in the theme other than the graphics that have been updated so far? I plan to make any other necessary changes but won't be able to accomplish much (if anything) before I leave.

FlashBanG · Post by **FlashBanG** » July 8th, 2004, 6:59 am

As long as you have the latest work of mark's theme (IIRC this is the only theme competing so far?) bundled up in a .jar file, i think we're good to go.

Thanks for your work :-)

Chris Cook · Post by **Chris Cook** » July 8th, 2004, 8:24 am

FlashBanG wrote:As long as you have the latest work of mark's theme (IIRC this is the only theme competing so far?) bundled up in a .jar file, i think we're good to go.

Do you speak with authority (i.e., are you a Sunbird dev)?

My latest jar is this one.

My concern is not so much with competing themes but if I have supplied enough for the theme to be integrated, should the devs decide to implement it immediately.

Possible issues with this jar:

The throbber is currently disabled.
The hover state of the mini-calendar nav arrows is disabled (they don't work well with WinXP).

FlashBanG · Post by **FlashBanG** » July 8th, 2004, 9:38 am

Sorry if i came across the wrong way..

No, i'm NOT a Sunbird dev (nor do i currently have the technical knowhow to become one).

What i WAS speaking on though, was this recent checkin by Mostafa:
http://bonsai.mozilla.org/cvsquery.cgi? ... %2Fcvsroot

Which shows he checked in most of the options dialog icons, for winstripe. Based on that, i assumed that he would go with the only winstripe theme out there right now (Mark's version).

So no, i'm not an official authority for Sunbird, just a bystander with an educated guess.

:-)

mvl · Post by **mvl** » July 8th, 2004, 10:38 am

That checkin only copied the icons from firefox. No new images yet.

Call for an official Mozilla Sunbird theme

Re: YASL (yet another Sunbird logo)

YASL (yet another Sunbird logo) v. 2 & 3

I like this one.