this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/2399016

Twitter’s new X logo wasn’t made by an in-house designer. It’s from an old podcast hosted by one of the cult that Elon took from his replies.

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[–] negativenull@negativenull.com 70 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Musk's logo for "X" is literally just Unicode Character “𝕏” (U+1D54F).
Which means that #Musk can't trademark the logo.

https://mastodon.social/@Rii_cck@mas.to/110768836422832847

[–] koper@feddit.nl 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's not accurate. Copyright and trademark are two different things. The name "twitter" is also just a combination of preexisting characters and the word was probably in use before the company was founded. You can still trademark existing things because trademarks are about preventing consumer confusion, not protecting original creations.

Musk does have a problem with copyright if it turns out this specific design was made by someone else.

[–] FlowVoid@midwest.social 32 points 1 year ago

The US Patent and Trademark Office is generally reluctant to enforce single-letter trademarks, and some countries ban them outright.

[–] FlowVoid@midwest.social 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The good news is that "x com" can be trademarked.

The bad news is that "x com" is already trademarked.

[–] MJBrune@beehaw.org 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

xcom is trademarked as a video game. There can be existing trademarks in different spaces. So you could easily get an xcom social media site trademarked.

[–] FlowVoid@midwest.social 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Yes, it's trademarked for use in video games.

And by another company for use in sporting equipment.

And by another company for fiber optics.

And by another company, as follows...

Telecommunications services, namely, transmission of voice, data, graphics, images, audio, and video via the internet

Yeah, maybe should've stuck with "Twitter"

[–] nzodd@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's too many letters though. I'm starting to think this imbecile is just tired of sounding out all seven letters multiple times a day. X is nice and simple, like him.

[–] FlowVoid@midwest.social 3 points 1 year ago

Let's split the difference. "Twit" fits.

[–] MJBrune@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

We'll see. The reality is that if you pay enough you can probably get the trademark off of anyone.

[–] ffolkes@fanexus.com 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah... But maybe not ANYONE... "Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has already registered an 'X' logo in connection to 'online social networking services' and 'social networking services in the fields of entertainment, gaming, and application development.'"

[–] FlowVoid@midwest.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

True, but ~~Twitter~~ X isn't exactly flush with cash right now. And if it aspires to be an "everything app", it might take more than one payoff.

[–] MJBrune@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean if Elon is going to push it, he has plenty of cash to invest into the company to buy out anything. He's also not above just using his personal assets for the company. E.g. X.com now redirects to Twitter.com.

[–] MasterCelebrator@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thats true but anyway it doesnt make sense do trash a Brand that has becone verb, has its Logo on Millionen of Websites and is refered to by probably every news Website in existence. Imagine if McDonalds changed their golden M to a gray O.

[–] ffolkes@fanexus.com 2 points 1 year ago

Imagine the confusion when people order a "Big O".

[–] argv_minus_one@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

“I'm losing control of the situation!!!” —Elon Musk, probably

[–] helpimnotdrowning@lemmy.sdf.org 60 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Not to defend musk, but it's not from one specific font. The logo is just Unicode char 1D54F, a blackboard bold X/"MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE-STRUCK CAPITAL X"

[–] electromage@lemm.ee 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A character is nothing without a font though. When you look at a character on-screen, it's being rendered in a specific font. Typing that Unicode character in "Special Alphabets 4" produces the image in question.

[–] GammaGames@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The character (𝕏) doesn’t actually doesn’t exist in the font, because supporting arbitrary Unicode characters in every font would be absurd. Paste it into the font preview and it renders a black square.

[–] MJBrune@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are fonts that support every unicode character though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noto_fonts supports up to Unicode 13. How do you think phones display every single unicode character in a text message?

[–] GammaGames@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Of course there are fonts that support every character, the characters themselves would be useless if they couldn’t be rendered by anything. I’m only saying that this specific font doesn’t support the character.

[–] MJBrune@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Oh, I see, I misread. That's interesting. So it looks like it's typically just a glyph.

[–] pyr0ball@reddthat.com 29 points 1 year ago

Lol so he put even less effort into it than we thought

👏⏱️👏

[–] BrooklynMan@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] melroy@kbin.melroy.org 7 points 1 year ago

That is a better source then cross posting from lemmy.ml. Thanks.!

[–] thejml@lemm.ee 12 points 1 year ago

Does Musk even have any “In-house” designers anymore? Figured those were let got with the rest of the teams.

[–] bermuda@beehaw.org 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

fonts are ridiculously cheap if you're a billionaire. Musk is stupid, but I doubt he'd be so stupid he didn't pay the like $200 fee.

[–] SafetyGoggles@feddit.de 11 points 1 year ago

You'd be surprised

[–] nzodd@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

If your font has the potential to be made into a logo, you would think the designer would have the sense to negotiate a higher rate. I have no idea if that's how it is in practice, but to do otherwise seems quite foolish.

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