malliz wrote:But would you like your next house to be designed in the way you are talking about?
Houses today are largely designed and built to specifications based on the needs and desires of the people who will live in them, with revisions back and forth between home-owner, designer, builder, and community supervisor if it is a planned community. That is actually exactly the process I'm talking about. A process where the end users have some say or influence over the final product is at once very old fashioned (pre-industrial) and modern. Please excuse my amateurish idealism.
Sorry but it's an amateur way of doing things which ever way you look at it. In the end one or two people have make the decision and long rambling discussions on how pepsi did it or the mistakes of a fruit juice campaign really have no other purpose than to muddy the water. Having been involved in a professional way in just this type of process many times I cannot help think that Mozilla already have a very clear idea of where they want to go and this is more of an ego boosting campaign to keep the masses happy. It is certainly wasting bandwidth.
What sort of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter. "Terry Pratchett"
I can't help but to agree with your last statement, malliz.
Folks, I have been following this thread and right now, I am looking for a reason to keep it open. Let me know if you come up with something worthwhile.
SK wrote:I am looking for a reason to keep it open. Let me know if you come up with something worthwhile.
Well, I think the discussion has had some value. But might (as with the daily build threads and such) it be better to have new threads for each of Alex's posts, rather than having everything in one big thread? Threads with many pages generally tend to deteriorate whatever the subject matter (see also the geolocation thread...)
How about a compelling reason for not keeping this thread open? The pepsi side track was relatively short and not really off-topic. malliz can have his suspicion about why this thread exists in the first place, but as far as I can see, that's not based on facts.
For the first time I'm looking at the samples on a monitor that at least attempts to be accurately calibrated, and I have to say that the renderings (especially iteration 5) look a bit dark and desaturated. Sorry if I sound like a broken record, but going back to the concept by Horlander, it's a bit more saturated and brighter, which give it a more lively and warm feel.
Through I will say that the tail in iteration 5 is an improvement, though I still don't think it's on par with the Horlander concept. I realize the coloring isn't done, but a few things stand out. I don't particularly like the thick outline around each tuft. It makes them look/feel too thick, heavy, and scale-like as opposed to the Horlander design which feels more light-weight, crisp, wispy and flame-like. Also, I don't know if it's just me, but I think the end of the tail on Anthony's renderings are too fat overall. It doesn't seem to taper down at all. I definitely don't think the tail should be as dominant as the head, and I think it disrupts both the circular feel to the graphic as well as the effect of cradling the world. IMHO Horlander's design is better balanced in that regard.
Last edited by Bluefang on May 21st, 2009, 7:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
There have always been ghosts in the machine... random segments of code that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols. Unanticipated, these free radicals engender questions of free will, creativity, and even the nature of what we might call the soul...
Having been involved in a professional way in just this type of process many times I cannot help think that Mozilla already have a very clear idea of where they want to go and this is more of an ego boosting campaign to keep the masses happy. It is certainly wasting bandwidth.
We did indeed have a clear idea of where we wanted to go (the Hicks concept work dates back to 2007). However, a transparent process (in addition to simply being the way Mozilla operates) has genuine benefits. For instance it gave the community member Stephen Horlander an opportunity to post an idea for the tail, and that idea directly influenced the design direction. The transparency also gives us a good read on acceptance. While otherwise not directly related, had Tropicana used a transparent design process they wouldn't have had the logistical problems of reverting a brand already deployed to shelves.
Calling our approach amateurish is partly fair. For instance the name "awesome bar" which emerged out of the community was criticized by mainstream press as a "childish name" in Firefox 3 reviews, and isn't something that a well dressed marketing team at Apple sitting in a locked conference room would have thought up. However, in general I believe the benefits of transparency and collaboration outweigh the appearance of a lack of professionalism.
Actually Awesome Bar came from the dev because he found he needed a catchy name to impress the drivers. I can find the quote if you like. It certainly did not come from the community.
The only benefits I see at the moment is that this project is now 12 to 18 months late it should have already been done and dusted for Firefox3 as the current icon looks flat and somewhat dated on Vista. Speaking from experience it would have been completed in a real world situation and even preliminary planning for the next iteration would at least have been discussed.
What sort of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter. "Terry Pratchett"
Actually Awesome Bar came from the dev because he found he needed a catchy name to impress the drivers. I can find the quote if you like. It certainly did not come from the community.
Ed came up with the name while sitting in his room on the campus of UIUC, when he probably should have been sleeping or studying. Anyway, I was trying to agree with you that we happily embrace a certain level of amateurishness, because of our open and collaborative process.
Note: this is a draft icon rendering for Firefox 3.5, subsequent iterations will be posted every 24 hours or so. Also note that while these drafts appear with numbers and in a chronological order, each draft experiments with a variety of different ideas as we try things out to see what they look like. It's better not to think of these as a formal sequence, but rather a series of experimentations to explore the overall design space.
Also please note that the tail (with a current flat color) literally hasn't been painted yet, this is a work in process as we try to define the correct shape for the tail. Once we get that figured out the tail will get detailing with texture, color and lighting.
The icon is being rendered by Anthony Piraino at the Iconfactory. The design has been influenced by a conceptual sketch by Jon Hicks, and a conceptual render by Stephen Horlander.
Background Information on the Project
-Creative Brief -Evolving a Product Brand -Thinking about Refreshing the Firefox Icon
Not wanting to mix up in the discussion about whether it is professional or not to do it this way, I just wish to say I think it is really cool that I can see what is happening and how the progress goes. I enjoy following how this goes and what motivations are behind the changes. To give some input however; the 6th iteration of the draft render is pretty much the same as the icon as it is now. Iteration 1 started with a different look of the icon, but throughout the polishing process of the icon it is now turning into pretty much what it was before this process was started.
I think Iteration 6 is a big improvement over Iteration 5. The colors look much better. though it still seems a little on the dark side. Thinning out the tail also worked really well. Still not a fan of the border on the tufts, but I'm hoping that will go away when then coloring gets worked on.
One think that catches my eye this time around is the hard line of the light 'bubble' on the top side of the globe. Actually, the bubble its self looks kind of out of place. I think it might look better if the edges and top border were softened up a bit.
There have always been ghosts in the machine... random segments of code that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols. Unanticipated, these free radicals engender questions of free will, creativity, and even the nature of what we might call the soul...
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