The Royal Blog

It’s no secret that our friends at Mozilla have a thing for online communities. However, their latest project, Mozilla Service Week, finds them reaching out to their loyal fan base with the goal of helping those who aren’t as fluent with the Web.

Mozilla Service Week (MSW) seeks to not only help people get online, but also improve that experience so that the Internet will do what it’s supposed to – improve our quality of life. It’s a logical social cause for a company like Mozilla and one that will be achieved through the energy and skills of the talented members of their online community. The “service” portion of this project will be fulfilled through hours of donated actions from Web-savvy volunteers taking the initiative to do things like teach a senior citizen how to set up an email account or spending the day showing a non-profit organization how to utilize social networking. But it won’t stop there…

Over the past couple of months the Royal Order has been helping Mozilla design the MSW website and collateral materials. Although this is technically a branding system we’ve created, we started with the website design in an effort to allow plenty of time for development while the rest of the branding and collateral was fleshed-out offline.

The purpose of the website is threefold: recruit volunteers and partners, document their actions, and inspire an online community beyond the week of the event. The design direction began with referencing the inspirational imagery of 1930s WPA murals and the various aesthetic and compositional styles of advertising from the 30s and 40s – then marrying that with a clean and versatile Web-friendly approach to the page layouts.

One overarching goal was to make sure the site design will work when translated in 17 different languages, and counting. Additionally, the design needed to direct both volunteers and those in need of help to the proper points of interest on the site, while providing them with ideas on how to get involved and inspire participation. Ultimately, we want users to register and pledge a desired number of hours, or find talented volunteers who can help with a specific need. The idea is that volunteers will then return to the MSW site to share their story of service and inspire others to get involved. They will be able to do this using not only their words, but also by linking to their online media like videos, photo albums, blogs and websites.

Some other interesting devices that will be used on the site are: Mozilla’s Lizard Feeder, which tracks content related to MSW and streams it live on the home page; a set of of site badges, ads, and branded posters volunteers and users can download to promote MSW and their volunteer actions; personalized certificates that will be generated for volunteers who return to log their actions; and a ticker that tracks the number or hours donated.

Mozilla Service Week is set to take place the week of September 14-21 of this year and Mozilla will be rolling out the web site (mozillaservice.org) over the next few months. We’re looking forward to seeing the site and brand in action as volunteers log their service stories and hours. As always, we’re honored to be a part of Mozilla’s distinguished online legacy as well as their bold visual design tradition. But The Royal Order is also proud to be participating in MSW as we help Tutor Mentor Connections/Cabrini Connections redesign their online presence. Check back for updates concerning the launch. You can also follow the progress and developments on Mozilla marketing guru Mary Clovig’s blog or follow them on Twitter and Facebook.

Other sites we’ve designed with Mozilla: firefox.com, mozillamessaging.com, spreadfirefox.com