One of the reasons we love helping communities that create and support open source projects is the direct and explicit communication we have with those folks.[…]
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Our journey to the open source design world continues with our involvement on the Thunderbird project. One of the reasons we love helping communities that create and support open source projects is the direct and explicit communication we have with those folks. They are always there to answer our questions and give feedback during the entire creative process, just like we did with the [Reproducible Builds](https://reproducible-builds.org) community on their Mailing List and through IRC meetings for quite a few months. Now, we have the Thunderbird community which [reached out on Github](https://github.com/thundernest/thunderbird-website/issues/22) at first for a creative "404" page for their website and this is where we got in.
Since early on, we had a special connection with Thunderbird. While many users moved to web-based mail clients, we always preferred using a single mail client to manage our mail and calendar. In fact, in the early days our founder Elio helped [redesign the Thunderbird Conversations add-on](https://github.com/protz/thunderbird-conversations/issues/967) and even now our email infrastructure is powered by [ProtonMail and ProtonMail Bridge](https://protonmail.com/bridge/) via Thunderbird.
## Logo redesign
Unfortunately, Mozilla moving away from Thunderbird created technical and design debt throughout the past years, resulting in a wider gap between Firefox and Thunderbird. As a comparison, Firefox latest logo makeovers happened in 2010, 2013 and 2017. Respectively, the last update to the Thunderbird logo and branding was 2010.
The good news however is that efforts to revitalize Thunderbird have gained momentum again. Monterail have visualized their vision of a new Thunderbird UI, Thunderbird itself has now a Community Manager and a new Project Council was recently appointed. [We didn't hesitate to jump on board](https://twitter.com/elioqoshi/status/972067552846319616).
This marked the start of a wonderful collaboration. In Open Source we often times encounter resistance and hesitation to change. It's something we acknowledge and can understand, considering there are contributors who have been involved for years and suddenly someone out of the blue suggests doing a number of changes. We respect that. However the Thunderbird project has been welcoming to suggestions and help, allowing us to enjoy the process thoroughly beyond simply handing off the deliverables.
To be inline with the new Firefox Photon Design system, we worked on a fork specifically tailored for Thunderbird, including a revamped logo and word mark. We also set the stage for an upcoming UI redesign in the future by conducting a small Usability Study specifically tailored on security features out-of-the-box within Thunderbird. We would like to thank Open Technology Fund for supporting this work towards the Thunderbird project as part of its Usability Lab.
## New Logo
Quite a few months ago designers involed on the Thunderbird project filed a new [issue on Bugzilla](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1404648) and started discussing for a possibly redesigned logo for the e-mail client software. Elio Qoshi, Ura's creative leader and founder, as part of the greater Mozilla community got into the discussion and together with the community they came up with a revamped logo. The continious consultation among the community members and Ryan Sipes, Thunderbird's Community Manager, resauleted on a remodeled logo which was included on the Thunderbird 60 release.
Elio Qoshi
7 years ago