The History of Twitter’s Logos Before and After Elon Musk Came Along

After a decade of Twitter’s iconic bird logo, the well-known symbol has been replaced with the letter ‘X’ by Elon Musk.

The application has been marked by the little blue bird for years, but how did the logo come about, what were Twitter’s past logos, and why did Musk decide to replace it?

The Founding of The App And It’s Origins

NEW YORK – MAY 05: (L-R) Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone of Twitter attend Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the World Gala at the Frederick P. Rose Hall at Jazz at Lincoln Center on May 5, 2009 in New York City. (Photo by Jemal Countess/WireImage for Time Inc.)

The company was first created in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams. The platform originally served to be a place where groups of people could send messages back & forth, very similar to group texting.

An early test design of a Twitter logo. (Credit: Twitter)

The first logo may look alien to fans of the platform today, sporting a font and green color not dissimilar to Nickelodeon slime or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The first public Twitter logo. (Credit: Twitter)

Luckily, this logo never reached the public. Instead the first public logo featured a Y2K friendly and bubbly font, and the iconic light blue Twitter became associated with.

just setting up my twttr

— jack (@jack) March 21, 2006

The first tweet was written on March 21, 2006, and simply read, “just settin up my twtter.” Just a couple months later, in July, the app debuted to web users.

The Bird Debut

The first design of the Twitter bird. — Simon Oxley’s stock image Twitter bird. (Credit: Simon Oxley)

The first Twitter bird was actually created in 2006, after British graphic designer Simon Oxley put a blue bird on a stock image website. An employee bought the design for fifteen bucks. However, because major companies aren’t allowed to use stock images for logos, the platform opted for a redesign.

Timeline of varying Twitter logos through the years. (Credit: The New York Times)

Twitter experienced its next logo change four years later in 2010, when Biz Stone transformed the iconic blue bird into something more cartoonish. By 2012, the company arrived at the bird logo users know and love today.

PARIS, FRANCE – FEBRUARY 07: In this photo illustration the Twitter logo is displayed on the screen of an iPhone in front of a computer screen displaying a Twitter logo on February 07, 2019 in Paris, France. Twitter today posted better than expected Wall Street results over the last three months of 2018, with net profit up 28% and revenue up 4%, but the stock is falling. After losing 5 million monthly users by the end of 2018, the social network Twitter decided to stop giving figures. In its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2018, the company explains that this announcement will take effect in the second quarter of 2019. (Photo by Chesnot/Getty Images)

In 2012 the platform’s former director Creative Director Doug Bowman, “Twitter is the bird, the bird is Twitter.” A statement which did not age well.

Twitter In Elon Musk Era

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is pictured as he attends the start of the production at Tesla’s “Gigafactory” on March 22, 2022 in Gruenheide, southeast of Berlin. – US electric car pioneer Tesla received the go-ahead for its “gigafactory” in Germany on March 4, 2022, paving the way for production to begin shortly after an approval process dogged by delays and setbacks. (Photo by Patrick Pleul / POOL / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK PLEUL/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Longtime CEO Jack Dorsey took his final step down after leaving and returning a few times in May of 2022. While Elon Musk toyed with the stock market & buying Twitter for months, the company has finally ended up under his watch.

Our headquarters tonight pic.twitter.com/GO6yY8R7fO

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 24, 2023

As of July 24th, 2023 the app officially changed its logo to the letter X. In a Twitter spaces audio chat Musk said, “We’re cutting the Twitter logo off the building with blow torches.”