I thought I'd redesign the Twitter X logo for a bit of fun, and came up with 3 designs.
This is a bit of a departure from normal design videos I do, because my greatest design interest is in character design specifically. But as a freelancer I have lately been interested in branching out into the logo space, and have therefore been looking for chances to get in some logo design practice.
We all know that Twitter underwent an enormous and controversial rebrand to just ‘X’, and that as a part of that rebrand the usual bird logo was replaced with a new logo that is- the letter X.
The change is not exactly a popular one, and I could do an entire video on it’s own about the history of that initial logo and its design. Most of the complaints about the new logo boil down to either its simplicity, or a lack of recognise-ability. That is to say, most feel it’s lacking in branding.
I thought it was a great opportunity to test out my logo design chops, and keep in mind that I mean no disrespect to the designer of the current X logo by doing this video. I have no doubt in my mind that the spec demands given were extremely restrictive, something that I will not have to deal with here at all.
Logo 1:
So I really wanted to create something visually recognisable for branding purposes, somehow combine the ‘X’ and the bird imagery of Twitter in a hopefully creative way. But as a logo, try to still keep it simple.
You’ll see that I stuck to the task for this first logo, but that while it did have a certain look that I liked – almost an attitude I suppose – there was also a major problem with it.
The imagery, iconography within the logo was confused. I think you’ll all notice what I’m talking about. If you can see the hockey sticks in this logo, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Logo 2:
Logo 2 was my attempts to improve upon the flaws of logo 1. I removed the bars down the bottom to remove what I will now call ‘the hockey stick factor’, and played around with the size and image resolution.
Logo 3:
This is the logo I am most excited about. The idea was to combine the X and bird concepts with a hashtag, another iconic piece of Twitter’s visual symbolism. Initially I was going for bird feet, or talons drawn in a pigeon-toed stance that would get across both the X and hashtag visuals. However, this just didn’t look right. So I swerved on a dime and went for something far more appropriate- the crossed beaks of two chattering birds! That way I’ve got the letter X, bird symbolism, a visual representation of a hashtag – don’t think I’ve forgotten about that component – and a the imagery of two birds literally tweeting to one another. And I don’t even think it’s too busy.
I think this was a fun experiment. Logo 3 was my favourite, but which do you like best? Please leave a comment and let me know.
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