I stumbled across two recent articles discussing Elon’s supposed new Twitter Blue Logo. One from Fast Company titled Elon Musk’s new Twitter Blue logo is perfectly awful, and another from Boing Boing titled The new and laughably bad Twitter Blue logo.
In the Fast Company article, the author Jesus Diaz viciously critiques the logo, using it as a metaphor for the current chaotic state of Twitter under the reign of Elon Musk. In reading, it’s obvious the author dislikes Elon.
Below is an excerpt from the article:
“Just look at it! I don’t know who designed it. Maybe someone from accounting made it, since it’s safe to assume there may not even be a design department at Twitter after all the massive layoffs and ultimatums. Perhaps he prompted a generative image AI to create a “logo that combines the word ‘blue’ with the Twitter bird brand, ’80s porn production company, CorelDRAW clipart CD, LOL.”
There’s just one problem, Jesus…that ain’t Elon’s Twitter Blue logo.
I’m no journalist, but I did a quick Google image search and stumbled upon a suspiciously similar graphic for a Twitter Blue promotional video from November 9, 2021 —a year before Elon bought Twitter.
I don’t want to tell journalists how to do their job…but do your damn job. Real journalism means putting personal assumptions and biases aside to present information based on facts. Once you’ve nailed that down, feel free to attach your frivolous opinions.
However, the authors were right about one thing — the Twitter Blue logo was symbolic of Twitter being a hot mess…back in 2021, which is exactly why Elon Musk purchased the failing social media company.
Twitter hadn’t booked an annual profit since 2019 and posted a loss in eight years of the past decade. The company’s net loss narrowed in 2021 to $221.4 million from $1.14 billion the previous year.
But I don’t want to discuss Twitter’s finances. Let’s get back to the topic at hand, the so-called awful Twitter Blue logo. Besides the inaccuracy of the logo’s origins, another claim the authors casually get wrong is referring to the graphic as a logo — when technically, it’s not the Twitter Blue logo.
This is the actual Twitter Blue logo (notice the lack of chrome and neon lights):
The “logo” journalists and others are so happy to bash is simply a playful logo alteration — much like Google does to add a little character to their brand. Such conflations are just another example of poor topic research and blanket assumptions by so-called journalists.
People can like or dislike Elon all they want. All we ask, as a society, is that those who call themselves journalists try to put their feelings aside to get the facts right, even if it doesn’t go along with their personal narrative.
Putting out incomplete or, in this case, inaccurate information divides us and makes other journalists who properly do their jobs look bad.
More importantly, as a designer and a child of the 80s, I don’t want Elon fanatics to believe he created this logo/graphic — because the next thing that’ll happen is we’ll start seeing awful ’80s logos popping up everywhere.