With the news of the Elon Musk's rebrand of Twitter to X, one of the designers of the social media platform's original blue bird symbol took to LinkedIn to share insight on how it was created.
Martin Grasser, one of three people who designed the current logo back in 2012 - along with Todd Waterbury, currently the chief creative officer of Target in the US, and Angy Che - said that it was designed to be simple, balanced, and legible at very small sizes, almost like a lowercase "e."
"There was essentially no brief, other than we want a new bird, and it should be as good as the Apple and Nike logo. Twitter had made some sort of flying goose - but Jack [Dorsey, Twitter's founder] wanted something simpler," he said in the post simply titled The Bird.
Logo evolution of Apple, Nike and where Twitter was in 2011
"So, I just started drawing birds. Drawing is one of the quickest ways to understand how the shapes can work together.
"I was also trying to capture the motion of birds, and the shape that profile created led us to play with that round belly in the 3rd and 4th sketches.
"We liked using circles to construct our drawings, it felt like the bird should have an underlying neutrality and simplicity about it.
"From that point on we really spent our time perfecting every little detail... so that it felt balanced, and visible as a bird at the smallest of sizes.
Slight variations to the spacing and construction of the bird
"Sometime in March we had an approved bird and it launched in May of 2012. This little blue bird did so much over the last 11 years."
Final Twitter Logo with construction grid
Final Twitter Logo
In the comments of his post, Krystal Cano, formerly a senior technical sourcer at Twitter in San Francisco and now in the same role at Doordash, said the trio of designers built something that became iconic that "we used so much internally as a team".
"Every project had the bird associated in a certain way. It gave us a sense of community and we all love this bird so much! Thank you for your hard work!" she said.
Elizabeth Erchova, an ecosystem and venue manager at software developer Edge & Node in San Francisco, said that Twitter's little blue bird will forever remain "one of the most iconic logos".
"Amazing work, Martin. Thank you for the story," she said.
John-Luke Laube, the founder of branding agency John Luke Studio in New York City, said the creation of the bird was "excellent craftsmanship".
"An icon that inspired many," he said.
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