Happy Cogs Redesign Mozilla
redesignmozilla.org
redesignmozilla.org
IMO all the concepts are giving too much emphasis on big slick graphics and too little on content. I was still left asking "what's your point?" and "am I on a band's website?"
I like that in the current design the focus is on the products. I wish they'd maintain that and use the emphasis on products as the starting point for the redesign.
More people care about Mozilla's products than the idea of open-source.
I think that, while these designs might be a little art heavy for some, they are on the right track, as when you're talking about Mozilla as a public organization and an umbrella of properties, it makes sense to have the sites talking about their broader goals and trying to educate people about the ideas behind the group. Mozilla.com can "sell you" on Firefox and Thunderbird. Mozilla.org can do the same for the principles and resources behind the products.
People know when they are being sold. These web page designs are trying to sell. The "product" is that Mozilla is better because of its principles and because there's a community. I admire Mozilla a lot, but... newsflash: NOBODY CARES. Users don't care. Developers sort of care but they know about Mozilla already. If they are looking for donors, perhaps some deluded people think "community" is automatically great, but I'd think it would be more effective to talk about success stories and how provably influential Mozilla is. Once the potential donor is fished in, then talk about why this happens at Mozilla and not at Microsoft.
Even as a marketing website these designs are not very fresh nor do they get to the heart of what makes open source different. It's like someone said "global community" and the designer thought "global... global... how about a globe?" and "community... community... I know, constructivist graphics reminiscent of 1920s communism!" These designs are clueless about what a real software community is like.
I did like the watercolor backgrounds, though.
The funny thing is, this was the reason that FireFox forked from Mozilla in the first place, and the reason why it became popular with regular people. Now it's back as the main branch of Mozilla, and it looks like the Crazy Communist Dinosaur team is back at the helm.
It's fascinating to watch.
These re-designs worry me.
At the release of Mozilla 1.0, the website looked like this: http://web.archive.org/web/20020802080030/http://mozilla.org... -- clearly targeted towards developers, with product download links hidden in a nondescript column. I suppose that's what Ross was talking about: The site didn't offer any convincing arguments as to why you'd want to download their browser, and didn't make it easy to do so.
Nowadays, the download site has moved to mozilla.com which is very much targeted at "Real People", and .org is about evangelism and developer info, at least the first of which these designs reflect quite well. If they go overboard it's on the marketing speak and boldness, but certainly not on technical details and programmer jargon like the old mozilla.org did.
That said, the .com vs .org distinction is probably confusing: They should just move Firefox to firefox.com and drop the Mozilla brand from it altogether.
I dont care for the open source propoganda, as far as I can tell from these designs is mozilla want to engage the community a bit more, but nothing pulls me in. I would guess I am in the target market for this and I am not in anyway more inclined to become part of mozillas community
and only 1 of the 3 even have a somewhat decent introduction to the suite!
The huge header graphics are a joke, I'm at a 1920x1600 screen but still get the vertical scrollbar at my normal browser-size.
I also find all offered layouts annoyingly cluttered and uncomfortable to read. The artsy colors and low contrast may work for a webdesign studio portfolio - but I'll prefer the current mozilla.org over each of them any day.
Worse yet, google says that most people don't look beyond the third result. So the mental fold is even higher than that.
but this is mozilla.org, its about the community and the developers, .com is about the products
Theoretically, yeah. But see, a lot of people know mozilla is a non-profit. And thus, must automatically type mozilla.org instead of .com. IMO the two should show the same site.
Of course they must have more solid data and hopefully they are using it to make their decisions.
Not as advertised.
It gives me the sense that, like many designers, they are in frustrated-artist mode. They don't care so much about what Mozilla needs as their personal desire to make super-sized gorgeous graphics that wow their colleagues.
Believe me, I understand the motivation... but I don't think these designs are going to help Mozilla.
;-)
Naw, they will hopefully get better in the next couple of iterations.