Jon Hicks (born 28 October 1972, in

Leamington Spa Royal Leamington Spa, commonly known as Leamington Spa or simply Leamington (), is a spa town and civil parish in Warwickshire, England. Originally a small village called Leamington Priors, it grew into a spa town in the 18th century following ...

) is an English designer who owns his own design studio, Hicksdesign. Hicks is best known for rendering the

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and ...

logo into its final form, based on a concept from

Daniel Burka Daniel Burka (born December 17, 1978 in Canada) is best known as the former creative director for website Digg and as a design partner at GV. He is also a founding partner at the web design company ''silverorange'' based in Charlottetown, Prin ...

and a sketch from Stephen Desroches. He has worked on numerous other design projects.

Early life

Hicks left school at 16 and studied a

BTEC ND The BTEC (Business and Technology Education Council) Level 3 diploma is a Further Education qualification and vocational qualification taken in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The qualification is organised and awarded by Pearson within the ...

Technical Illustration Technical Illustration is illustration meant to visually communicate information of a technical nature. Technical illustrations can be components of technical drawings or diagrams. Technical illustrations in general aim "to generate expressive i ...

for two years followed by an HND in wildlife illustration for three years. He then worked as a designer at

Coventry City Council Coventry City Council is the local government body responsible for the governance of the City of Coventry in England, which has been a metropolitan district since 1974. The city is divided up into 18 Wards each with three councillors. Coventry ...

before going

freelance ''Freelance'' (sometimes spelled ''free-lance'' or ''free lance''), ''freelancer'', or ''freelance worker'', are terms commonly used for a person who is self-employed and not necessarily committed to a particular employer long-term. Freelance w ...

in 2002 setting up Hicksdesign. Hicksdesign became a

partnership A partnership is an arrangement where parties, known as business partners, agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests. The partners in a partnership may be individuals, businesses, interest-based organizations, schools, governments o ...

in 2007 and a

limited company In a limited company, the liability of members or subscribers of the company is limited to what they have invested or guaranteed to the company. Limited companies may be limited by Share (finance), shares or by guarantee. In a company limited by ...

in 2008.

Internet work

Hicks is best known for his work on the

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current and a ...

and

Mozilla Thunderbird Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source cross-platform email client, personal information manager, news client, RSS and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation and operated by subsidiary MZLA Technologies Corporation. The project s ...

logos, has also worked on the Miro,

Mahalo.com Mahalo.com was a web directory (or human search engine) and Internet-based knowledge exchange (Question-and-answer website) launched in May 2007 by Jason Calacanis. It differentiated itself from algorithmic search engines like Google and Ask.com, ...

and

MailChimp Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform and email marketing service. "Mailchimp" is the trade name of its operator, Rocket Science Group, an American company founded in 2001 by Ben Chestnut and Mark Armstrong, with Dan Kurzius joining at a ...

logos and the Camino websit
CaminoBrowser.org
Hicks also created a popular diagram of the

CSS Box model In web development, the CSS box model refers to how HTML elements are modeled in browser engines and how the dimensions of those HTML elements are derived from CSS properties. It is a fundamental concept for the composition of HTML webpages. ...

and a widely used trick to counter the " IE whitespace bug". In September 2008 he announced that he would work as Senior Designer for

Opera Software Opera is a Norwegian multinational technology company and subsidiary of Kunlun that specializes in web browser development, fintech, as well as services such as Opera News and YoYo Games. The company's total user base, including users of its d ...

, improving the

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

interface for the company's

Opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librett ...

browser. In February 2010 he wrote in a blog post that after working on a long term project he got the itch do something different. For that reason he stopped working full-time at Opera and does freelance work again. In June 2015 Opera Software announced that he will join Opera as Lead Designer for the Desktop team. In July 2016 he announced on his blog that he's finishing working for Opera from August 2016 and is "back in stock".

Personal life

Hicks is married and lives in

Oxfordshire Oxfordshire is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the north west of South East England. It is a mainly rural county, with its largest settlement being the city of Oxford. The county is a centre of research and development, primarily ...

. He has two children.

Rissington Podcast

Together with John Oxton, Hicks hosted The Rissington Podcast from September 2007 to February 2009 from the ex-RAF military base where the Hicksdesign studios were based. The podcast's topics are web design (particularly answering listeners' questions), technology and cheese.

References

External links

Hicksdesign

The Rissington Podcast

Jon Hicks on Twitter
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hicks, Jon English graphic designers Living people 1972 births