7 ms·

Until now I didn't realize Mozilla changed their logo. Now I've seen it the typographer in me cries… The whole purpose of text is to _unambigously_ convey infor

Until now I didn't realize Mozilla changed their logo. Now I've seen it the typographer in me cries… The whole purpose of text is to _unambigously_ convey information. So either Mozilla now rebrands themself as moz-colon-slash-slash or they now live with a significant portion of typography-anal nerds who dislike that logo.

roryisok 10y ago
> The whole purpose of text is to _unambigously_ convey information I don't know if its ironic that this sentence had a typo and some non-working markdown Anyway, the purpose of text may be to unambiguously convey information, but the purpose of a logo is to look cool and be memorable
- notheguyouthink 10y ago
  Fwiw, the Markdown works just fine. Hackernews doesn't support Markdown. I'm not sure what you call this weird thing that HN does support.. but it's certainly not markdown.
  - roryisok 10y ago
    markhalfdown? or... italics
  - JadeNB 10y ago
    > I'm not sure what you call this weird thing that HN does support.. but it's certainly not markdown. Markaround.
TorKlingberg 10y ago
There's been several front page articles about it over the last few days. It's a perfect bike shedding topic.
laumars 10y ago
Logos fall more in the realm of graphic design rather than typography. They're an avatar thus logos don't necessarily need to be readable - albeit there is a modern trend to use the company name in an interesting typeface as their logo. However there are plenty of examples where a company logo contains no text what-so-ever - including Mozilla's previous logo[1]. So I wouldn't get too hung up on its typographic design. At least not unless Mozilla start using 'Moz://a' in normal correspondence. ;) Personally I quite like it. It's memorable and well suited to the business they're best known for. Which is essentially the crux of a logo. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Mozilla_dinosaur_head_logo.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Mozilla_...)
- bisby 10y ago
  You dont remember when people got confused and always called Mozilla 'red dinosaur head' because the logo was confusing?
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    This isn't a logo, it's a stylised name, they serve different purposes. Consider Indesit, they style their name but have a useful logo that can stand alone. Mozilla could do with an actual logo, something that fits with the Thunderbird & Firefox logos. Edit: Having looked at the other designs I think they chose correctly, but perhaps needed a "none of the above" option. This https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/now-for-the-fun-part/#comment-1989 https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/now-for-the-fun-part/#co... gets closer. Perhaps they wanted something that worked just using text, I guess. Maybe 2017 will be the year of leet-speak on the desktop!?!
    - toyg 10y ago
      > This isn't a logo, it's a stylised name Pretty much all the material about the redesign says this is, in fact, a logo. I agree that the whole process was a complete clusterfuck. They picked the less atrocious suggestion. It's still terrible.
- 10y ago
gkya 10y ago
> The whole purpose of text is to _unambigously_ convey information. The purpose of text is to convey information, ambiguously or not. Text is a coherent and cohesive group of one or more sentences. A logo is not text, it is a graphic that represents an establishment or a brand. It may include some text, but it is as text as a photo of a road sign with some text on it is.
- datenwolf 10y ago
  > Text is a coherent and cohesive group of one or more sentences That would be prose¹ (and to some degree poetry). Text² is an object that can be read. And by that definition… > A logo is not text … yes, a logo can be text. ---- 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prose 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_(literary_theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_(literary_theory)
  - gkya 10y ago
    Read better into your wikipedia articles. This is how your #2 continues: > It is a coherent set of signs that transmits some kind of informative message.
matt4077 10y ago
Well maybe those self-proclaimed typography nerds could take this moment to collectively wonder how all these thousands of companies using fonts other than Helvetica could have fallen for amateurs telling them that fonts could convey emotions, that ambiguity could be artful, that art could have value, or that branding could shape perception. I mean that one guy named his company "Virgin". How ambiguous is that? He'll have a learn a lot of things. And did you hear about the guys using an emoticon as their logo? Of like a fruit or something? Good thing marketing doesn't work on me, or anybody else for that matter.
minikites 10y ago
>The whole purpose of text is to _unambigously_ convey information. I have a pile of novels (e.g. Faulkner, Philip K. Dick) that argue against this very narrow view of text.
praisewhitey 10y ago
You must hate calligraphy.
db48x 10y ago
You're not going to like the curl logo either, then.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  They go together really poorly. If Moz://a is the Mozilla logo then presumably Curl:// is the Curlill logo ... which it isn't, they follow different paradigms.

roryisok 10y ago

> The whole purpose of text is to _unambigously_ convey information I don't know if its ironic that this sentence had a typo and some non-working markdown Anyway, the purpose of text may be to unambiguously convey information, but the purpose of a logo is to look cool and be memorable

notheguyouthink 10y ago
Fwiw, the Markdown works just fine. Hackernews doesn't support Markdown. I'm not sure what you call this weird thing that HN does support.. but it's certainly not markdown.
- roryisok 10y ago
  markhalfdown? or... italics
- JadeNB 10y ago
  > I'm not sure what you call this weird thing that HN does support.. but it's certainly not markdown. Markaround.

TorKlingberg 10y ago

There's been several front page articles about it over the last few days. It's a perfect bike shedding topic.

laumars 10y ago

Logos fall more in the realm of graphic design rather than typography. They're an avatar thus logos don't necessarily need to be readable - albeit there is a modern trend to use the company name in an interesting typeface as their logo. However there are plenty of examples where a company logo contains no text what-so-ever - including Mozilla's previous logo[1]. So I wouldn't get too hung up on its typographic design. At least not unless Mozilla start using 'Moz://a' in normal correspondence. ;) Personally I quite like it. It's memorable and well suited to the business they're best known for. Which is essentially the crux of a logo. [1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Mozilla_dinosaur_head_logo.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Mozilla_...)

bisby 10y ago
You dont remember when people got confused and always called Mozilla 'red dinosaur head' because the logo was confusing?
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  This isn't a logo, it's a stylised name, they serve different purposes. Consider Indesit, they style their name but have a useful logo that can stand alone. Mozilla could do with an actual logo, something that fits with the Thunderbird & Firefox logos. Edit: Having looked at the other designs I think they chose correctly, but perhaps needed a "none of the above" option. This https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/now-for-the-fun-part/#comment-1989 https://blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/now-for-the-fun-part/#co... gets closer. Perhaps they wanted something that worked just using text, I guess. Maybe 2017 will be the year of leet-speak on the desktop!?!
  - toyg 10y ago
    > This isn't a logo, it's a stylised name Pretty much all the material about the redesign says this is, in fact, a logo. I agree that the whole process was a complete clusterfuck. They picked the less atrocious suggestion. It's still terrible.
10y ago

gkya 10y ago

> The whole purpose of text is to _unambigously_ convey information. The purpose of text is to convey information, ambiguously or not. Text is a coherent and cohesive group of one or more sentences. A logo is not text, it is a graphic that represents an establishment or a brand. It may include some text, but it is as text as a photo of a road sign with some text on it is.

datenwolf 10y ago
> Text is a coherent and cohesive group of one or more sentences That would be prose¹ (and to some degree poetry). Text² is an object that can be read. And by that definition… > A logo is not text … yes, a logo can be text. ---- 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prose https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prose 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_(literary_theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_(literary_theory)
- gkya 10y ago
  Read better into your wikipedia articles. This is how your #2 continues: > It is a coherent set of signs that transmits some kind of informative message.

matt4077 10y ago

Well maybe those self-proclaimed typography nerds could take this moment to collectively wonder how all these thousands of companies using fonts other than Helvetica could have fallen for amateurs telling them that fonts could convey emotions, that ambiguity could be artful, that art could have value, or that branding could shape perception. I mean that one guy named his company "Virgin". How ambiguous is that? He'll have a learn a lot of things. And did you hear about the guys using an emoticon as their logo? Of like a fruit or something? Good thing marketing doesn't work on me, or anybody else for that matter.

minikites 10y ago

>The whole purpose of text is to _unambigously_ convey information. I have a pile of novels (e.g. Faulkner, Philip K. Dick) that argue against this very narrow view of text.

praisewhitey 10y ago

You must hate calligraphy.

db48x 10y ago

You're not going to like the curl logo either, then.

pbhjpbhj 10y ago
They go together really poorly. If Moz://a is the Mozilla logo then presumably Curl:// is the Curlill logo ... which it isn't, they follow different paradigms.