Rebuilding a simplified Firefox logo (opens in new tab)

That's by design.

You missed the key part of the article where the author mentions why the micro-details were added: "but purposely added more detail where needed to accommodate today’s high resolution screens".

That is an extremely important piece. If you don't go completely geometric and flat (which they didn't), and you don't add in those kinds of tiny details at large sizes the form will feel empty.

Instead, the designer chose to add details that wouldn't distract from the icon at small sizes, but would still make the form feel "full" at large sizes. To do that, the details themselves had to be made much more subtle. Add too much contrast and you run into the 2009-13 design's failures where distracting detail makes the icon hard to read at small sizes.

And please don't get me wrong, I love when after a sensationalist article/title, a well written informative comment puts the article in its place, but the pattern seems to repeat itself in every kind of post.

Brightening up the earth would negate one of the main points of the redesign, which is to fix the lack of contrast by removing the distractive specular highlight.

I was there for the presentation and at first I really didn't like it but more cleanup work has happened since then and I am really happy with the result. I think it's pretty irrelevant how it looks in larger sizes considering most people will only ever encounter it as an icon.

04-09 versions feel too layered, the fox really floats atop the globe, giving a disjointed feel. While the 3D tail on the third iteration aims to remedy this, it was still too popping (due to brightness, gloss and drop shadows) and increasingly so as one moves farther away from the tail. In the new version, the subtler earth ('dull') combats this. The fox actually feels less menacing.

A lighter blue makes the earth feel milky/foggy. Adding contrast to the continents just makes more details come up front and feels messy. Even with the toned down land masses, the sphericality of the new continents is actually much better felt in the new version.

The brightness and the details of the thinner tail makes it weight evenly with the wider and more uniform head and body. Ironically you argue for more details in the body while asking to remove the subtle hairs. Anyway I feel there's enough details in the form of volume lines and self-shadows.

Because it communicates that the fox is wrapped around the globe and not lying on top of it, to make it more "nurturing".

Why's that? Firefox has always had incredible design aspects to their products?

The only reason I noticed it was to do with firefox was because the original is so recognisable. This one just looks like either:

A fox hugging a blue ball A fox on its back looking into the sky

In so much of my experience, it often seems like version 1.0 (or sometimes 2.0 or 3.0) is the best version of something. All the original creators are still on board, the interface is straightforward, the functionality is clear, the product is good.

But then, by the time you get to 4.0+, the original creators have moved on, a new team comes in looking to make their mark, and suddenly a graphic overhaul is introduced, they start focusing on "content" or "exposing features" or whatnot, the interface loses organization and coherence, and bad decisions start being made.

I don't know of a name for this phenomenon, but it almost seems to be the rule rather than the exception. But it may explain why people seem to be so anti-change -- because, so many times, the change actually is just pointless or bad.

If posts looked more like "These bits are good. These bits need work. These bits should be scrapped entirely." then it would be easier to call them constructive. As it is, they just seem uncompromisingly conservative and pointless.

>The first step in the rebuild was to go in and strip out all the detail that was using blend mode layering such as multiply, screen and overlay – mostly found in the tail area 1. As stated, a key goal of the redesign was to make it work flawlessly in SVG as well as open up the possibility to rebuild all the internal structure using SVG and CSS gradients.

>Having reduced the logo down to its shape-tweaked forms 2 and softer gradients, we continued to remove any detail we thought wasn’t critical to the overall image. This tied into another goal of having the image hold up with greater clarity at smaller sizes.

Thumbs-up on removing the high gloss, though.

(yeah yeah, everyone's a critic)

Though really iOS7 is the least flat looking.