New SeaMonkey Logo Announced

Posted on December 3, 2005 by ctho

After months of submissions and selection processes, we’ve announced a new logo for the project and our application. Our initial call for logo submissions was answered with no fewer than 197 different proposals submitted by Mozilla and SeaMonkey community members. From those 197 logos, among many good options, we selected the new logo after many discussions and a long decision process.
Over many meetings and email discussions, we pared down the submissions to an initial group of just over 20 logos based on initial votes. At that point, each of us presented arguments in favor of submissions we liked and against those we didn’t, and ranked the top few logos in our order of preference. Unfortunately, all 5 council members had different favorites, so it took a lot of discussion after that point to pick a final logo. We narrowed it down to the top 2 choices – 76 and 137, and after yet more debates, settled on a variant of 76:

The new artwork focuses on an abstract figure resembling a “Sea Monkey”, colored in a light, cyan/blue color, standing out from a dark blue circle with a wave pattern in the middle. This design, created by Alex Butin, looks professional and polished, and fits perfectly as an icon on a modern computer desktop; it is easily recognizable even in small sizes. Additionally, the look fits well with the rest of the mozilla.org product family (Firefox, Thunderbird, Camino, Sunbird).
SeaMonkey 1.0 beta will include the new logo, and will be available in the next few weeks. “Nightly” branch builds will have the artwork within the next few days, and trunk builds already include it.

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17 Responses to New SeaMonkey Logo Announced

  1. KAMiKAZOW says:
    December 3, 2005 at 1:53 pm

    I hope the Mac OS X builds will use the original submission (with that glass effect), because it fits better into the Aqua style.

  2. marcoos says:
    December 3, 2005 at 2:02 pm

    137 would have been so much better… But still, 76 is not that bad, either.

  3. Ripat says:
    December 4, 2005 at 2:46 am

    Looking really good! I hope the new builds will be out soon.

  4. Odeann says:
    December 4, 2005 at 4:36 am

    Heh! The nice one. I like it! 😉

  5. David Tenser says:
    December 4, 2005 at 6:14 am

    Nice icon. One question though: What part of a monkey is that?

  6. Anonymous says:
    December 4, 2005 at 7:40 am

    Man, that much time to choose a crappy logo!
    I mean the logo is not bad but it was not in my top 10!
    I hope to see much more than a new logo in the next beta after so much time in developpement!

  7. Anonymous says:
    December 4, 2005 at 8:13 am

    I apologize for my last comment for being a little rude.
    The fact is that I am a little frustrated to see that Firefox offers new functionality and that SeaMonkey lags behind. In my opinion, SeaMonkey is the browser for web professionals and as such it should it should offers the novelties BEFORE the general public as a chance to get an hold on the next firefox. SeaMonkey should be ‘ahead of schedule'[compare to Firefox releases) and not behind.
    For example, I should be using a browser capable of showing a canvas month ago (before Firefox).

  8. CTho says:
    December 4, 2005 at 9:33 am

    KAMiKAZOW, I would not expect a different logo on the various platforms. I agree that on some platforms, the shiny version fit better, but we felt that in the majority of cases it did not.
    David, it’s not a monkey. It does resemble a brine shrimp.
    Anonymous, SeaMonkey 1.0a was capable of showing canvas, and personal/contributed builds have supported canvas for as long as Firefox (if official nightly builds don’t, it’s because the Mozilla Foundation hasn’t set up the machines that do the builds in such a way that canvas will work, and we have no power to change that). The current delays for shipping 1.0 beta are not our fault – we don’t have permission from the Mozilla Foundation to commit our last few changes to the CVS branch from which our 1.0 will ship, so we can’t do anything for now.

  9. Jonathan says:
    December 4, 2005 at 9:43 am

    IMHO, logo 137 would have been a better choice.

  10. Robert Kaiser says:
    December 4, 2005 at 10:05 am

    David: “Sea-Monkeys” are a special sort of brine shrimp, they are no monkeys… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea-Monkey can tell you more about them…

  11. Nuss says:
    December 4, 2005 at 4:36 pm

    It looks like a bird!
    I think it’s a pity you chose that one. There was a bunch of logos far better (color composition, recognition, identity, soul) than this one. The chosen logo in it’s original shape (with the shading and bubble effect) was better than this edited one, too.
    I’m actually a bit disappointed, considering the grand buffet you chose from. Maybe you could do as was done with the Firefox logo: make a revision, where lack of contrast and other flaws are straightened out, and I’m sure it will be fine enough.

  12. Adam Hauner says:
    December 4, 2005 at 11:48 pm

    I would like to thank for good choice. Logos like 129, 120, 137, 106 and 180 are all goog and winner is fine too. Good luck with new logo!

  13. Adam Hauner says:
    December 5, 2005 at 5:55 am

    Logo is good, als 120, 137, 129, 106 and 180 were fine.
    I just saw splashscreen and I hope that font used for “SeaMonkey” isn’t final and will be changed to something more original and visually better.
    http://www.jasnapaka.com/images/screenshots/seamonkey-splashscreen.png
    BTW how many graphics designers were in logo jury?

  14. Bruce says:
    December 5, 2005 at 8:12 am

    Is there a chance the name ‘SeaMonkey’ actually changes for the final release? I can’t imagine anyone taking me seriously when:
    *recommending this browser for cutting-edge net features and support
    *taking me or my reputation seriously when the word SeaMonkey is mentioned
    *ever using it because of it’s absolutely hideous name
    Full credit to those that had to design a logo for the (honestly) most ill-named browser to ever hit the face of the earth. Marketing-wise, you just lost millions of your potential userbase, IMO.
    I remain hopeful a more sensible name will be chosen that more closely resembles the nature of a modern web browser – and reflects the quality of the code and features of what should be one of the best – if not the best – browser on the planet.
    Virtually any word on earth (real and imagined) would have been better than this name.
    Thank you.

  15. zuMi says:
    December 6, 2005 at 9:45 am

    Seems a good choice; but can i ask if the svg is available? I’ve Seamonkey in my bebox and ‘cuz I’m using a svg-enable file manager, should be very nice to have its official icon on my desktop.
    Regards.

  16. Twoism says:
    December 19, 2005 at 4:18 pm

    Personally, I think SeaMonkey is a ridiculous animal in the first place, and not an interesting ridiculous animal like a FireFox or a ThunderBird…just silly.

  17. marios-p says:
    February 27, 2006 at 2:48 pm

    Is there a way to change the icon? (any extension or a value at configuration or something – not a theme…)

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