In the year 2005, Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass had the idea of creating a platform where people could post a status and converse. Later, Glass looked for a name in the dictionary and came across “Twitter”, which means chirping or agitation. Then, Biz Stone prepared the first designs for Twitter or Twttr, as it was called back then, and opted for a distinctive logo. Before its official launch, the Twitter logo had this appearance:
The first official logo – 2006
In the year 2006, a few days before its official launch, graphic designer Linda Gavin was asked to create a logo for Twitter. The main focus of her style was simplicity, and it was well-received by the public, although it also had its detractors who thought the design was quite childish.
The incorporation of the blue bird
The curious story of the bird begins in 2006. The idea of incorporating a bird is to express the following concept: tweets are sent (take flight) and transmitted as swiftly as a bird in flight. Due to its symbolism, the bird signifies success or freedom.
They purchased the first image from a website called iStock for a few dollars. The image was created by the designer Simon Oxley and was inspired by the Sialia currucoides (Mountain bluebird in English).
Curious fact: this bird was named Larry, in honor of Larry Joe Bird, the legendary Boston Celtics basketball player in the NBA.
Twitter’s different logos over the years
The logo purchased in 2006 could not be officially used because it lacked authorization from iStock. As the platform grew, they felt the need to incorporate the blue bird. It was then that designers Biz Stone and Philip Pascuzzo created two versions of the bird: a cartoonish version and a more minimalist one.
In 2010, Philip Pascuzzo and Douglas Bowman presented the official Twitter logo, incorporating the bird into the typography.
In 2012, Twitter unveiled a new logo called the “Twitter Bird” as its official mark. The new bird was entirely based on a silhouette and faced upwards, not leaning in any direction. It became the primary representation of the Twitter brand.
A feather from the wing and the crest on the head were removed. The lines now appeared perfect and balanced. There’s an explanation for that. The bird was created by overlaying 15 circles. According to Doug Bowman, who had worked on the previous version of the bird, the circles represent “your networks, interests, and ideas intersecting with your friends and colleagues”.
Colour changes
In the same 2012 update, the colour of the Twitter logo changed from light blue to a more vibrant blue.
In 2016 Twitter again made some minor changes to its logo. The bird remained unchanged, but the colour was slightly adjusted, and the lower part of the bird was rounded more.
What does the switch from Twitter to X mean?
In June 2022, before he acquired the company in October, Elon Musk told Twitter employees that the platform should be more like the Chinese app WeChat, which he said users basically live on the app because “it’s very useful and practical for everyday life”.
Musk presented his vision of an “everything” app called X, where users could communicate, shop, consume entertainment and more.
For his part, Musk tweeted that he wanted to change Twitter’s logo and polled his millions of followers on whether they would be in favour of changing the site’s colour scheme from blue to black.
Announcing the change on 24 July 2023, the CEO and chief executive Linda Yaccarino said the social network would now be geared towards commerce, banking and online payments. “Soon we will say goodbye to the Twitter brand and, little by little, to all the birds,” said Elon Musk.
In addition, the X also refers to the name of his son born in 2020: X Æ A-12 Musk, a strange set of acronyms whose true meaning remains unknown to this day.
Lights. Camera. X! pic.twitter.com/K9Ou47Qb4R
— Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) July 24, 2023
You can now access the social network by entering the website x.com. Doing so, however, redirects you to the familiar twitter.com domain. It is not known if that will change in the future, but that fact alone marks a new address.
Also, according to Musk himself, tweets will now be called x’s (‘exes’, if you pronounce it in English).
Elon Musk’s (perhaps temporary) rebranding of Twitter to “X” may seem risky, amateurish or even whimsical. But he is probably doing exactly what he intended: generating huge global interest, bringing Twitter closer to his other X brands (SpaceX, Tesla Model X, xAI) and clearing the way for a profitable merger of technologies.
