Twitter’s new X logo wasn’t made by an in-house designer. It’s from an old podcast

BrooklynMan@lemmy.mlbanned from sitebanned from site to Technology@lemmy.ml – 1056 points –

Twitter’s new X logo wasn’t made by an in-house designer. It’s from an old podcast hosted by one of the cult that Elon took from his replies.

135

It's just 𝕏

Maybe that’s the point though? You were able to type it into a comment and have it pop up on our screen identically to the actual logo.

He wants people to type the symbol instead of ‘X’

If that's the case, then he is severely overestimating two populations:

  • people who know how to input unicode characters

  • people who want to talk about twitter

  • People who had math in high school and have seen blackboard bold/double struck characters
  1. Copy/Paste
  2. It seems like a lot of people are talking about twitter even if mostly negative. I see it in the news and online way more often than before Elon bought it. And we are talking about it now ;)

Yeah, this post is like "Ghost of Kiev" levels of nonsense.

Makes sense.

Elon undoubtedly has folders full of cool images he's saved, so while he was still focused on the "X" idea, he rummaged around and found that one and thought, "Yeah! This is gonna be sick dude!"

Thus are decisions made by the world's richest teenage edgelord.

It's well known that X is the edgiest letter.

Pssh, Z is the ultimate ending.

H has just as many edges 🤔🤔🤔

W has more edges, therefore I’m claiming W.com as a social media site only for the most reactionary right wing chuds.

Dude doesn't even pay for the rent on his office buildings. Did we really expect he'd pay for fonts or creative work?

He should just skip a few steps and legally change his name to XxX_MuskyBoi420_XxX

It's not that far off from his son's name, X Æ A-12.

Why didn't he use the Cool S, tho?

Elon has trauma from being ousted as CEO by the board at x.com (the company that would later become PayPal).

He's living in the past.

I didn't know that. What a lame and petty mfer

Let me get this straight; you actually think Elon Musk, himself, combed through images he personally saved, found the X, and personally submitted it as the logo replacement.

Elon Musk. The crazy douche billionaire. You really think he sat at his computer and spent time doing that.

You don't think, maybe, just maybe, a man with more money than God might have gotten someone else to do it? I can see him being out of touch and not caring enough about quality to say "go with that one" without checking where it came from. But I just can't see Musk himself looking through fonts to find an "X" that he likes.

looking through fonts to find an "X" he likes

So... you didn't read the OP.

Yes though - I really do believe that he personally chose it, or more likely already had it in mind.

And then he played some Diablo IV, then jerked off, then played some more Diablo IV.

The 𝕏 is also a Unicode character:

http://www.unicode-symbol.com/u/1D54F.html

Somebody was trolling Space Karen when they provided this for a logo. It's not going to be easy to trademark.

Update: Not only is the 𝕏 a Unicode character, a podcast logo, a font character, it also seems to be a Microsoft and/or Meta trademark for online social networking services.

2nd Update: Musk hired a company to remove the Twitter sign from the building in SF but neglected to get a permit. The cops shut the work down.

Space Karen's destroyed the internationally recognized Twitter brand, reduced the value of his $44 billion purchase by at least half, chased advertisers and users away, seriously diminished the value of Telsa and tarnished his own reputation enough that it may never recover. He is now going to either have to back-pedal or be embroiled in years of litigation. Good thing the "genius" doesn't pay his lawyers.

Hmm something tells me that Musk isn't very good at forward thinking.

Looks like some Lemmy apps confuse this link for /u/1

Whoops.

Imma be honest, this 100% looks like xorg.

yeah it really does. also it makes it funnier how elon has joked with URL "x.com", knowing xorg's website is at x.org

edit: oh, so space Karen really did go forward with the x.com... well this will have funny consequences

X.com has been around forever. He owned it before, then PayPal owned it, and now he owns it again.

Is this all because Elon can't afford to renew Twitter's domain name?

He thinks a rebrand is going to solve all of his problems.

Musk has bad NIH Syndrome (Not Invented Here)

So, if I type a "Y" in Comic Sans and use it as a logo, I will have a billion dollar company?

Not guaranteed, but it might help you turn a 44 billion dollar company into a billion dollar company.

You have to start with a 40 billion dollar company if you want a billion dollar company using Musk's methods.

No, you have to buy someone else's billion dollar company first Then you can give it a shitty logo.

It's literally just a Unicode symbol.

From elsewhere:

𝕏 is a generic Unicode character known as "mathematical double-struck capital X."

So, does that mean he doesn't own the copyright to the logo if it is is a generic Unicode character?

That's a font/design issue, not a character issue. If that were the case, then no one could use letters (or unicode characters) for their logo.

Fonts are definitely subject to copyright. That's why there are open fonts and why not all of the fonts on windows are just thrown into Linux for compatibility.

Edit: forgot to finish with that the inverse is also true. If that X is indistinguishable from something copylefted or public domain then he will be facing a lot of trouble trying to copyright it.

The thing is, fonts are copyrightable but typefaces aren't. Typefaces are the symbols, fonts are the files that contain all the symbols along with the formatting and everything else that let you use the typefaces in software. So he probably can't copyright the symbol itself and it's doubtful he could get a trademark on it either. But at the same time, copyright is also weird in that if he made an image and had that X in it, he would have the copyright to that specific image. But that's only insomuch as anyone else would also own the copyright of an image they made with the stupid X in it.

That's my point. If he used a copyrighted/copylefted font, he might be in trouble. But he doesn't get in trouble just for using an unicode character.

To be fair, that design is a pretty basic one. Like extremely basic. Sure it's cleaned up and modernized but trying to say it was stolen is a reach. Elon does still have the Midas Touch where everything turns to gold, in which he subsequently murders everything he touches and makes even gold worthless.

This is like the discussion about how others were copying Apples corners, they are fucking round corners.

There is only so much you can design about an X, so no matter how they would design it, someone made that. You can find countless issues with Musk, but that's just sad and desperate.

Also the guy says "do whatever you want with it", so not technically stealing

...that was after they debuted the design.

As a graphic designer, I knew at a glance that nobody was paid to make that stupid "x".

If a client as big as Twitter asked me for an X logo I'd be so fucking depressed. It would be such a pain to make a proper logo like that without looking exactly like a dozen other ones, because it's hack and has been done to death.

The X everything app is literally some high school composition notebook doodle shit Elon has been clinging to for over 20 years. He's like the dad from the movie Holes that thinks he's a great inventor, but just keeps catching the house on fire and stinking up the place.

His rockets blow up, his cars crash and burn, his tunnels grind to a halt.

He has achieved nothing.

some high school composition notebook doodle shit

Kindergarten shit. "I want everything to be X."

He would have named the car company teXla if he could.

I was just thinking about all the websites that have the Facebook logo, the Instagram logo, and the Twitter logo on their pages. That's just supposed to be an X now?

Yes, but it should be pretty easy to add since it's just an unicode character

cant wait to have that on my keyboard!

actually that's some nice merch idea

It's in the Unicode set.

𝕏

It's one of the hollow letters used in math.

Basically what I'm saying is math should sue him.

Ah, so not copyright infringement or a blatant rip-off, just “inspired by”.

They saw it, and were truly inspired to copy it exactly 🤦‍♂️

Also close enough to the Xorg logo to be trademark infringement

Be careful. If they sue him, he’ll just buy X.org… and then enshitify it.

We have Wayland now, so he can have it. Most major software doesn't even use the cool x.org features anyway.

This actually confused me this morning using Mobile Safari. The ‘X’ is on the opposite side corner from the normal close button.

I fucking knew it. Something told me there was no way he hired an actual designer to design shit.

Not that I want to defend Elon or anything... But it's an X. The second most simple character in the alphabet. What are you expecting from an X? How much should one pay for one X?

Who gives a fuck.

Ohhhh, you got him now!! Surely this will make the people turn against him! 🙄

I mean, it's less about that and more about just calling out how stupid many of his decisions have been. What's wrong with pointing out stupid shit someone does in full view of the public like this?

Seems pretty fair since Musk is behaving like a douchebag

Edit: This was meant to be posted as a reply in a comment chain.

Yes. I can almost guarantee that's precisely what happened.

In fact, if there was any rich person I’d label as crazy and obsessive and self centered enough to comb through individual tweets it would be Elon.