A Tale of Two Logos: Nightly and Aurora
Aurora had but newly chased the night,
And purpled o’er the sky with blushing light.
- John Dryden, Palamon and Arcite
Folks, those book words are from an actual book. I looked them up. I have to say, they’re pretty spot on when it comes to introducing the tale I am about to tell – a tale of pixels that frolic along paths only vectors can carve.
We’ve recently had the dawn of a new day for Firefox at Mozilla with the introduction of our all new rapid release cycle. We now dispense Firefox love to the internets more often so you the user/artist/developer/general awesome person you are can take advantage of all the latest HTML glories sooner than ever before.
The introduction of the new release cycle has allowed us to create new channels for individuals to sample our wares – from nightly builds, builds that play with the first light of new features, to beta builds and beyond – there’s a flavour for everyone. We’re like Ben n’ Jerry’s now, and my stars, you’re gonna want to sample.
All Night Long
The new Nightly logo began its life fairly simply. Take one Firefox logo, give the wee fox an all-expense paid ticket to the outer edges of the artboard, and you have yourself a bare globe. Success!
Firefox logo sans renard
After removing some of the shine and shimmer from the default globe, the shadow of night was added to blanket the continents in darkness(random land masses are random folks), keeping in mind that the sun sets in the west of course. The original mockup of the logo had the light portion on the right, but after much staring that seemed to be silly. For you see, having the light portion on the right would only work for a product named after daybreak or “dawn”. The mind pieces things together and that little gem was placed in the “save for later” pile.
Sunglasses wearin' time
So now we have our darkened globe. At this point the inhabitants were bruising their shins on coffee tables and solid forms with edges at shin height, so points of electric light were added all thanks to the inspiring glow visual dreampt up by our friends in Mozilla webdev. One quick request by our UX team for moar lights and we had ourselves a thriving populace, their power meters spinning and wallets thinning.
Evening came, the first logo
Good Morning
If you thought designing the logo for Nigthly was painless, wait until you hear about Aurora. Take one Nightly logo, horizontal flip the night shadow, turn off the lights in the lit region, turn on the lights in the dark region, you have yourself a predawn globe.
The night at its darkest
Purists will tell you that dawn is actually the beginning of twilight before sunrise, but that’d just be a flipped logo and a reference to a movie with emo vampires. We’re extending the reach of Aurora’s light to the instant the sun crests the edges of the globe. Yes folks, vectors have that power.
Here comes the Sun
Now I have to admit, I wanted purple in this logo. My daughter, at the age of 3, insisted that I create a logo with purple in it. Lucky for me that when you overlay a radial gradient with the Firefox yellows and oranges onto the globe, you get some snazzy looking purples.
Morning came, the second logo
There you have it. The birth of two new logos for our rapid release channels. We hope you enjoy their presence as you partake in the rich, yummy goodness of the web using the latest in web browsery technologies.
For those keen individuals who noticed, yes “All Night Long” and “Good Morning” are Lionel Ritchie song titles. Congratulations!
Comments
Love this…thanks for sharing your process!
+1000000
Weird, I had always figured the land was the lighter portion of the globe
Very, very awesome. Love having the new Nightly and Aurora icons on my taskbar next to the Firefox icon.
How much do we have to beg for Nightly and Aurora personas?
Because, you know, I’ve got no shame. I’ll beg.
I’ll be making some shortly
Sweet. (And I don’t even really like personas, but somehow this seems like it would be Right and Good.)
Huzzah!
My only criticism is that the lights don’t scale very well once you get below 32 x 32, but it’s a really beautiful design. I love the metaphor of the sun rising to a new release.
Very nice!
Looking good. Let’s get those bad boys in’a snippet!
Looks nice
Though before reading this blog post I thought that the planet is just some sorta background and the light spots are stars or galaxies ^^
And you only have a pinch over 400 following you on twitter because… why? Amazing stuff, love your design process commentary. You had me LOLing on “Poor Little Sauron was never able to ride swings” PSD. Looking forward to seeing more of your work. Thanks. -J.
Interesting read! I actually figured out that the light spots were inspired by glow.mozilla.org.
The Aurora logo is so pretty I’m using that channel just to get the pretty icon. =)
Great stuff, Sean. …”Truly.”
I think that “Here comes the Sun” is better then final one for aurora. When looking at small size like in windows 7 taskbar there is too much glare and you can’t see what icon represents.
The logos will be pixel refined to work better at all the sizes.
No actual aurora then, just a sunrise
Well, aurora means dawn, just a little before the sunrise. Aurora often gets confused with aurora borealis or the Northern Lights, named for their similar look to the light of dawn dancing in the northern skies. Many folk shorten that phenomenon to “aurora”, which by definition isn’t entirely correct.
Perfection………….it gets better and better!
Any chance of a larger version of the side-by-side picture for wallpaper? Looks great!
http://mozilla.seanmartell.com/nightly-aurora-1920X1200.jpg. Enjoy!
They look far too similar to me, especially if you’re color blind.
Damn, man… You’re awesome!
Nice, nice. I love how they became what they are and how they all make sense.
Very cool. I really think it’s awesome how you shared your process. Just out of curiosity, what toolset do you use for your designs?
Interesting article. I commented some aspects (in French) of your work on my Tumblr and I would know if we can expect a same kind of reading about the process concerning Thunderbird icons.
I think its time for Firefox to change its logo to that of Aurora!