Twitter Updates Default Avatars
Finally!
I’ve been using Twitter for about a year and a half now, and one thing that has always bugged me was the gruesome default avatar assigned to people who, for whatever reason, have chosen not to upload a photo. I have remarked that they shouldn’t let you send any tweets until you upload some kind of avatar.
The old one was obviously just a lowercase o and a zero, separated by an underscore, which form a sort of creepy ASCII face, maybe squinting. The new is a lovely bird, Twitter’s brand mascot and symbol.
The reason I’m writing about this is because I’m a total sucker for icons, symbols, avatars, and marks. Although I generally don’t have the patience to design desktop icons, I appreciate how they can change the entire mood or feeling about an application or document with just a subtle glance. And I’m not the only one; we, as humans, recognise shape and colour well before we actually put together text and numerals. In other words, I know a bird means Twitter, I know that Illustrator is yellow, and I know Safari is round.
On a side note, Twitter has been dramatically improving their interface in recent months and although I use Tweetie for my desktop tweeting, I have to give props to their design team for cleaning up that mess.
via Mashable ยป
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// a tale of design, design: web, web technology
// 2 Comments »
// 17 September 2009, 17:12
The new avatar looks either like a bird or some sort of winged ghost!
I’m not sure of the name of them but there are some sites that use an icon in the URL bar when you visit their site. That works as well, it helps to reinforce the brand of the site and it is something that we notice as we log in or visit.
Stays in the history as well and helps you identify in future.
Stil doesn’t beat a good, imaginative logo though!
// 21 September 2009, 00:30
Sammi, what’s your Twitter name?