Behind the scenes of Firefox's new branding

It's not often that we get to see the original development work that went into advertising images used by world-famous brands. So it's a treat to see these preparatory sketches for a campaign commissioned by the open-source browser Firefox.

Firefox wanted the campaign to embody qualities such as simplicity and friendliness

Firefox wanted the campaign to embody qualities such as simplicity and friendliness

The illustrations were created by Martijn Rijven as part of a commission for Firefox by Wolff Olins. The browser wanted its campaign to be based around the idea of embodying human qualities such as simplicity and friendliness.

We love the playful and vibrant way the fox's tail mirrors the movement of the Firefox logo here.

Rijven produced a total of nine foxes as part of the commission. The initial designs were created using colour pencils before being rendered in Adobe Illustrator.

Rijven created nine fox designs for the popular browser

Rijven created nine fox designs for the popular browser

The mascot is part of Firefox’s attempts to expand its brand - it recently it announced that it would be releasing a Linux-based operating system for smartphones and tablet computers.

The first smartphones running the open source system are expected to be released by July 2013. The main benefit of the system is its ability to run entirely in HTML5, which means a large number of developers will be at Firefox’s disposal to work and improve the system further.

Words: Alex Williamson

  • Alex Williamson is an art and design student in London, who blogs about design, art and illustration. Follow him on Twitter.

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