The problem is one of literalness. Most designers (and many laypeople) will look at colon-forward-slash-forward-slash and easily see "ill," while many people w

The problem is one of literalness. Most designers (and many laypeople) will look at colon-forward-slash-forward-slash and easily see "ill," while many people who still type in URLs and use colons and forward slashes outside of sentences and they see those literal characters. It wouldn't be a problem if so many of Mozilla's target users didn't fall into that second group. This is a visual identity solution that is clever at first glance, and which seems especially clever to non-technologists, but shouldn't have made it all the way to market. There's a series of gates similar to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs that a visual design should progress. One of the first three gates, even for a logotype, should be usability. It seems like the new Mozilla logo fails the usability test for enough core users to be a problem. It's cool to see designers take chances. You live and learn. I, personally, don't think their old identity was the thing holding them back, but new CMOs/CDOs love a visual rebranding. Nothing says this is now MY house more than a fresh coat of paint!