Twitter’s logo was one of the world’s most loved.

For over a decade, Twitter had one of the most recognisable and beloved logos in the world: a simple, cheerful blue bird in flight. Internally it was nicknamed “Larry” — reportedly after basketball legend Larry Bird of the Boston Celtics (co-founder Biz Stone is a Boston native). The final, refined version was designed in 2012 under creative director Douglas Bowman, built entirely from a set of overlapping circles for perfect geometric harmony — a clean, friendly, upward-flying silhouette that captured the light, chirping, real-time spirit of the platform. The bird became genuinely iconic: instantly recognisable, universally understood, and warmly loved. Founded in 2006, Twitter and its little blue bird grew inseparable. Our homage nods to the rebrand with an abstract crossing X.

In 2023 Twitter made a shocking branding move.

Then came one of the most dramatic and controversial rebrands in modern history. After Elon Musk bought Twitter in October 2022, he abruptly rebranded it to “X” in July 2023 — scrapping the beloved blue bird and the very name “Twitter” (and its whole vocabulary of “tweets”) in favour of a stark black “X”, reflecting Musk’s ambition to build an “everything app.” The reaction was intense. From a pure branding perspective, it was widely seen as astonishing: Twitter voluntarily destroyed enormous, hard-won brand equity — a globally recognised name that had become a verb (“to tweet”) and one of the most loved logos anywhere. Discarding decades of accumulated recognition and affection overnight is exactly what brand strategists spend careers warning against — making this a genuinely landmark (and cautionary) case study.

Was killing the bird bold or reckless?

The Twitter-to-X switch became a fierce debate about brand equity. On one side, the conventional wisdom: it was a reckless destruction of value. “Twitter” was a household name, a verb, a beloved logo — assets worth billions in recognition and goodwill, thrown away for an abstract letter with no built-in meaning or warmth. On the other side, the argument for bold reinvention: Musk wanted X to be something entirely new and much bigger than a microblog (a payments-and-everything “super-app”), and clinging to the old bird and the “tweet” vocabulary would have anchored it to its past. From that view, a clean break was necessary to signal transformation. Most brand experts leaned toward “reckless,” but the episode genuinely crystallised the core tension in branding: the immense value of established equity versus the case for radical reinvention. It’s now a textbook example taught precisely because it’s so debatable.

The X rebrand is a lesson in brand equity.

Whatever one’s verdict, the Twitter-to-X rebrand is a landmark lesson in brand equity — the accumulated recognition, associations and goodwill attached to a name and symbol. The central lesson is stark: established brand equity is enormously valuable, and discarding it is extraordinarily risky. “Twitter” and its blue bird had achieved something almost no brand does — the name became a verb, the logo became universally beloved — and walking away from that overnight forfeited billions in recognition and emotional attachment that took years to build.

The episode also illustrates the genuine tension every ambitious brand faces: continuity versus reinvention. There are times when a brand must break with its past to signal genuine transformation — and Musk’s “everything app” ambition was the argument for X. But the bar for abandoning strong equity should be very high, and most such moves fail precisely because they underestimate how much value lives in the familiar name and mark. The practical takeaways: understand and respect the equity you’ve built; change names and beloved logos only for the most compelling strategic reasons, and even then consider evolving rather than obliterating; and never underestimate the emotional attachment people form with a symbol. Twitter’s bird was proof that a simple, friendly logo can become genuinely loved — and X is the ongoing, real-time experiment in whether killing it was visionary or a historic mistake. Either way, it’s one of the most instructive branding stories of the decade.

From a friendly bird to a stark letter.

The identity went from a soft blue bird and rounded wordmark to a single stark black “X.” The specimen below stands in with a heavy sans.

The old and the new. Click a swatch to copy the hex.

The identity shifted from “Twitter blue” #1DA1F2 to a stark black #000000 for X. Both shown below.

Keep the rebrand lesson on hand — save the homage and the palette to a board.