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.

    • koper@feddit.nlEnglish
      23·
      11 months ago

      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.socialEnglish
        32·
        11 months ago

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

    • FlowVoid@midwest.socialEnglish
      23·
      11 months ago

      The good news is that “x com” can be trademarked.

      The bad news is that “x com” is already trademarked.

      • MJBrune@beehaw.orgEnglish
        11·
        11 months ago

        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.socialEnglish
          15·
          11 months ago

          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.orgEnglish
            3·
            11 months ago

            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.

          • MJBrune@beehaw.orgEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

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

            • ffolkes@fanexus.comEnglish
              5·
              11 months 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.socialEnglish
              2·
              11 months ago

              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.orgEnglish
                1·
                11 months ago

                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.deEnglish
                  3·
                  11 months ago

                  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.

  • helpimnotdrowning@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    61·
    11 months ago

    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.eeEnglish
      29·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • Gamma@beehaw.orgEnglish
        10·
        11 months ago

        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.

          • Gamma@beehaw.orgEnglish
            4·
            11 months ago

            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.orgEnglish
              2·
              11 months ago

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

  • thejml@lemm.eeEnglish
    13·
    11 months ago

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

  • bermuda@beehaw.orgEnglish
    10·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • nzodd@beehaw.orgEnglish
      1·
      11 months 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.