Twitter Gets a New Look, Creates Its Own Font

Image: Twitter

Announced in a blog post this past Friday, Twitter’s User Interface is getting a complete design overhaul, and the social media platform has developed its very own, proprietary typeface aptly dubbed ‘Chirp’.

“Every year our marketing team takes a step back from our brand, creative work, public expression and activations. We look in the mirror and ask ourselves if what we see creatively, reflects what Twitter is”, tweeted the platform’s Chief Marketing Officer, Leslie Berland.

After bringing all-new functionality like Fleets to its users over the course of the last year, the folks behind the platform decided that it was time for a new look.

Wanting an “art-first approach” to their brand identity, Twitter teamed up with Paris’s Atelier IRRADIÉ for its new design. The product of the partnership, as sampled in the blog post, is an edgy, disruptive, and creative new design that promotes “emotion and expression”.

After relying on third-party fonts like SF Pro, Roboto, and Helvetica Neue its entire life, Twitter has finally created a typeface it can call its own — and it’s almost adorably named Chirp.

The Chirp typeface, created in collaboration with Switzerland’s Grilli Type Foundry, incorporates American Gothic and European Grotesque styles, with a tinge of very specific, hand-tailored early woodcut specimens.

Twitter hopes that its new typeface will strike a “balance between messy and sharp to amplify the fun and irreverence of a Tweet, but […] also carry the weight of seriousness when needed”.