Visualizing SUMO With Your Help
Since its inception one year ago, SUMO has become an amazing community-powered support channel impacting millions of Firefox users around the world. David Tenser has been working on an informative blog series reflecting on the accomplishments of this past year, and envisioning the future of SUMO as we near 2009. He talks about taking SUMO to the next level by continuing to strengthen the existing community and improving the overall support process. Some of the proposed changes include a better understanding of the big picture, measuring performance and user satisfaction, building closer relationships with local communities, and even branching out to support other Mozilla projects.
As part of this evolution, its important that we create a strong visual identity to encompass the essence of SUMO and its ongoing mission. Although we’ve used various faces for SUMO in the past such as Foxkeh and the friendly nurse, we don’t feel that these fully represent what the project is really about. So, David and I are working on creating an official logo, and we need your help!
More specifically, we need your help in brainstorming ideas around the design concept and how to best represent SUMO visually. In the past SUMO has dedicated its resources to Firefox and is therefore primarily known as “Firefox Support”. But as David notes in his blog, SUMO aspires to be much more, and the appropriate description would really be “Open Source Support.” SUMO is also not just a place to solve problems, it’s a place to help other people. We have a vibrant community of active contributors dedicated to sharing their knowledge and helping each other. So how can we incorporate this personal touch into the mix? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
How do you define SUMO? What does it mean to you? How does it make you feel? What differentiates it from other forms of support? Let’s put our heads together and come up with some really good ideas. Feel free to use words, phrases, pictures, sketches, or whatever you’re most comfortable with. We’ll use your feedback in forming a creative brief, which serves as guidance for the graphic designer who will then illustrate the actual logo.
September 23rd, 20085:54 pm at
Great post, thanks Tara. Personally, I’m envisioning an artistic rendering of David Tenser as Thor, smiting problems with his mighty hammer.
If that’s too esoteric, there are some great thoughts in this bug:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=398782
September 24th, 20084:07 pm at
[...] in Firefox and Mozilla. Music : Don Henley – Dirty LaundryAs Tara bloggd, she and David are working on a logo for the Support project, and want input about how others [...]
September 28th, 20082:22 pm at
I am working on some photography pieces to help depict it.
October 2nd, 20084:35 pm at
How about an artist rendering of a sumo fighter in stance with the fire fox logo wraped around him with one of his feet crushing any problem.
I dont know in my mind it looks very good
October 8th, 20082:04 am at
I’m sure you have heard tales about these Saint Bernard dogs rescuing people trapped in the Alps snow. It was said they carried cognac little barrels hanging from the collar to reanimate people. Well, the Saint Bernard can help people under extreme weather conditions, so a Saint Bernard could make a great logo for SUMO. (And “SUMO” could make a great name for a Saint Bernard!!).
Cheers
October 15th, 20085:48 am at
[...] In order to get a logo that truly captures the core values of SUMO, Tara initiated the process of collecting feedback from the community, asking for inspirational words, ideas, and even design concepts that could be incorporated into [...]
October 18th, 200810:31 am at
Hi. Some thing i (as a designer) really don´t like: the different look&feel in the mozilla product-family. i like the thunderbird, firefox and sunbird and lightning logos most. they are round (easy to place), feel and look good and make a pretty professional feeling. AND every “main”-product has got an animal as logo and name. in my opinion a good choice. every brand and/or company has a system behind naming their products/works. e.g. volkswagen has names of winds for their cars. and this is something i really miss in the mozilla-projects. a “red line” through all of your products-names and -logos. i would suggest to first re-think the name “sumo” and instead thinking about an animal (e.g. the QA-Departments Duck-Suggestion for QACs)… i shouldn´t really be an owl. maybe there are other animals who own the adjective “wise”.
summary of my suggestions:
- choose a new name (animal reknown for his/her wisdom)
- repeat the outer shape of logos of your most popular products within the mozilla-product-family
- one animal surrounding (on max. 3 sides) a product that stands/needed for searching/knowledge
wish you best.
November 3rd, 200812:17 pm at
[...] month I shared our plan of creating an official logo for SUMO and asked your help in brainstorming ideas around the design concept. We got a lot of [...]
December 9th, 20084:40 pm at
save to my Bookmarks
February 5th, 20094:18 am at
[...] to really helpful brainstorming from our community to determine what the SUMO project stands for, followed by invaluable feedback on the initial candidates from the whole Mozilla community, and of [...]