Elon Musk Apparently Tweaked X’s Logo To Correct An Optical Illusion
Illustration 289629202 © L9871456 | Dreamstime.com
X might have freed the bird last year, but the resulting logo that rose from its ashes needed a little more balance. When Twitter rebranded to X in July 2023, eagle-eyed users were quick to notice that something about the new branding was oddly unbalanced.
Originally created by Alex J. Tourville for a discontinued podcast in 2021, the emblem was later picked up by the social network after hosts Tourville and Sawyer Merritt gave Elon Musk permission to use it for free. Merritt even shared a tweaked, slimmer version of the design on July 23, just as the rebrand took effect.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 23, 2023
Correction to my previous reply: @ajtourville designed the thicker X logo below for our (now discontinued) @OfficialXPod. The thicker logo was inspired by a font he found online (bottom right). I created the video above using the font logo, adding a glow and little lines in the… pic.twitter.com/GF0l2KM2Vt
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) July 23, 2023
While X ultimately went with a thicker look, the visual balance still felt a bit off, something graphic designer and hand lettering artist Will Paterson had mentioned at the time of the overhaul.
The mildly jarring quality wasn’t due to haphazard design. Rather, it was the effect of an optical trick known as the Poggendorff illusion, Paterson explains in a new video. This phenomenon occurs when the human brain misinterprets the position of intersecting lines obscured by another shape. In the case of the X logo, this illusion caused the top-right stroke to appear as if it didn’t connect to its lower half.
And it seems the company did listen to the comments, moving the right stroke further away from the main stem to counter the effects of the Poggendorff illusion.
As Paterson puts it, “This forces the X to appear correct to the human eyes, even though mathematically, it’s totally incorrect.” Sometimes, getting it “right” means bending the rules—or in this case, the lines.
[via Will Paterson and Logopedia, images via various sources]
