In this research paper I will talk about the history of the Firefox logo. Firefox (or Mozilla Firefox) is a free, open source web browser and it was released September 23 2002. You will see me talk about how it was first developed and the designs that were used as well as who created it. The point of this research paper is to learn more about the different concepts of design used to develop these logos and to understand why they chose the different approaches they did.
The Firefox logo Design was initially made by British designer Jon Hicks, although Hicks was the one to actually design Firefox’s final logo. In the 1990’s Firefox was not as popular as other web browsers so it was unknown to many. The founders, Blake Ross and Dave Hyatt launched Firefox as a way to celebrate the foundation of the Mozilla community, though it was not named Firefox but Phoenix Browser which they found out later had a trademark already. Their second option was also a no go so they decided to name the browser Firefox after the tiny red panda. The first versions of the logo are way more detailed, the Designers just tweaked them a little bit in terms of brightness and made it less detailed and more simple and captivating to the eye.
In 2002, the Phoenix Browser was launched and the initial logo sure lived up to its name. It is an image of a red bird resembling a phoenix with wide wings whose feathers are supposed to resemble flames, we can also see some details like flames on the tail and wings, serving to the legend of “The phoenix rising from the ashes”. It definitely catches the attention of the people and it tells a story so that’s a positive thing. Of course, the founders were having trouble with the name because it already belonged to another company so they finally decided to let it go in 2004.
The Browsers name changed from “firebird” to “firefox” and clearly, the browser needed a new logo because the old one no longer matched the theme or the name of it. That is when Jon Hicks comes into picture and starts visualizing ideas. He sketched a couple ideas and they went with the best option which was the one of the orange fox surrounding planet earth with its long fiery tail. Hicks used Fireworks MX tools to design the logo and tried to simplify it and removed unnecessary details and reshaped and resized everything so it would look more pleasing to the eye.
Ever since then, the Firefox logo has slightly changed although it may look the same to a person’s eye, designers eye always catches every little detail so, in 2005, the logo was tweaked again just a slight bit. The tail was changed to a more vibrant Yellow color, more light spots appeared on the foxes body to give it more texture and dimension, some pointy rough edges were softened a tiny bit, the globe was repainted in two different tones of blue and added to the top of it, a barely even noticeable white halo which also gave it slight dimension.
Once again, in 2009, designers decided that the logo needed more slight tweaks once Fireworks Mozilla 3.5 was released. The fox became darker and it had more of a 3 dimensional look to it surrounding the globe, the shapes drawn in the globe changed and was accompanied by a large circular white spot at the top of the logo while an elliptical looking grey shadow appeared at the bottom which just made it look more realistic.
In 2013, most details were stripped from the logo and it became more simple once again, Hicks used a gradient to blend the colors better and only the tail had multiple layers to it .
In 2017, the design was greatly simplified, the detail was so slight that the image of the fox became blurry, the tail was made longer, brighter hues were used and the shadows and lights disappeared.
Last tweaks were made to the logo in 2019, but before doing that, the founders conducted a study to decide what the logo should look like. The concept of the logo retained the same while all known details disappeared, the globe is significantly small, it changed to a blue- violet gradient, we can also now see the fox’s head turned to the right giving it a profile and it has this pink- orange- yellow gradient to it. The design is way simpler but it
catches the eye.
A fun fact about the Firefox logo is that the animal portrayed is not really a fox, it’s an Asian red panda and the platform is called Firefox because it is a mistake when trying to translate “red panda” from Chinese to english.
Next to each other you can really see the difference and the tweaks. You can also see the simplicity which they carry.
Sources:
https://logos-world.net/firefox-logo/
