The text-free Twitter logo

 

Text-free logos can be powerful, and they can conjure important connotations when it comes to brands, but is a young and developing company such as Twitter wrong to remove all words from theirs?

Last week, the six-year old formally brand-caviler company announced that there are now rules to the branding on their website*; a lower case “t” is no longer acceptable for “Twitter”, and the newly rounded bird logo must be text-free, must always face to the right and should never have its colour changed in any way.

It could be argued that the company, who have previously changed their logo several times, are in the dangerous territory of not having enough support for their accurate new branding to be spread much further than the website itself. Across the internet, the logo is shown as a share button for news stories and blogs, but the majority of websites that have such a feature have no financial motivation to update it, so it’s likely that the old logo will remain.

The new logo itself, described by Doug Bowman - Twitter’s Creative Director as: ‘similar to how Twitter users’ networks, interests and ideas connect and intersect with peers and friends,’ consists of three sets of connecting circles that are creatively curved to form a very familiar looking Twitter bird that’s not completely different to how it had looked before. 

The problem with Twitter’s new text-less branding is the big opportunity that is being missed to emotionally connect with their users. Words, if used correctly, can be compelling and exciting, inspiring and gripping, and they shouldn’t be so easily disregarded from such an important brand.