I’m amazed at how many people think Twitter has copied the X Windows logo
when you’re trying to make a point it’s always worth being right and not wrong
Tom Warren is amazed that many people notice a new logo having almost exactly the same shape as a well-known, decades-old one. Tom Warren would like everyone to know that he is much more clever than they are, for noticing that it also resembles an obscure font’s glyph for an obscure unicode character that has existed for roughly half as long. Good for you, Tom Warren. We all admire you and the glorious blue-framed check mark next to your name.
obscure font’s glyph for an obscure unicode character that has existed for roughly half as long
Standard monotype font
𝕏 - “mathematical double-struck capital X”
Added to Unicode in 2001, used a very similar character for X11 in 1984, added to math in… who was the first mathematician in history to ever use it?
Blackboard Bold - popularized in the 1960s.
Yes, yes… it’s fine to acknowledge the existence of math notation that most people will never use.
Tom Warren chose to fixate on a specific typeface (not math) and use that as an excuse to criticize people for their valid comparison to something that predates it. He followed up by declaring that he was “right” and others were “wrong”. Is he a four-year-old?
I can’t think of a more snide, self-aggrandizing way to participate in the conversation. It was unnecessary, rude, and not even technically correct*, which is why he has earned my mocking comment in response.
*(We can see in the replies that the glyph he shows to support his position is in fact not the same as the logo being discussed.)
OK, so maybe Tom Warren is not the most likable guy, or not one to defuse a controversy that can lead more people to his website.
But I think it is technically correct:
- There is both 𝕏 and 𝕩, not sure which one looks closer to the “formerly-called-Twitter” one, but they do look really close
- They do follow a way of writing that predates the X11 logo, I wouldn’t be surprised if the X11 logo itself was inspired by that too
- The glyphs appear just like that as part of the default Unicode typeface I’m using on my phone right now
I think the part we should take from this, is “Elon just wrote an x in a ‘1337 way’, and called it a logo”.
