Happy Friday!

Welcome to the third issue of TWID - the only design newsletter on the internet written by me.

This week was kinda ✨ w i l d ✨ … to say the least. Thanks for being here. We have a lot to cover, so lets skip the intro & get straight into the sauce 🥫

WK30

@twitter “rebrands” to “X”

The beloved blue bird is dead, and Elon’s favorite letter has taken its place.

Everyone and their auntie has heard of this by now, so I’ll keep it brief (doubt).

This story begins in the ‘90s, with Elon getting the x.com domain for an online bank he co-founded with his boys. It eventually became PayPal, and ~2 decades later, Musk bought back the domain.

And like every good indie hacker, Elon needed to build a venture to go along with his really cool URL. But building something yourself is way too hard, so eventually he just bought Twitter.

Super cool (I would have done the same, honestly).

After almost a year of alienating advertisers and users alike, Musk decided it was time to kill whatever was left of the globally recognizable brand that is Twitter.

So after months of hard work & back and forth with world class creatives and industry experts, Twitter revealed their new identity.

Just kidding, that would make way too much sense. Instead, the brilliant mind of our favorite billionaire decided to commission X’s new logo from its users 🧠

Super fiscally responsible, for sure. And, of course, thousands of people jumped on the opportunity to do their best work, entirely for free.

Great question Adam… anything to help a struggling a non-profit, of course.

Within a few hours, Elon declared a winner.

That’s when the flood gates opened.

Honestly, it’s hard to follow the chronology of the events, considering how much discourse was happening (and how little I care about building a timeline), but here are some really fun facts:

Kinda looks like the “X” glyph from Special Alphabets 4

It’s not quite it, though. Monotype has confirmed that the new Twitter logo doesn’t match its font.

Looks even more like the double-struck unicode X

𝕏 lol

There are dozens of other things I can include here, like Twitter taking over the @x handle without warning or compensation, using an Envato asset for its animation, or the general controversy around whatever an “everything app” is supposed to be.

Personally, I think it’s best to just let this go, and maybe go outside for a while.

Abuse of power in the workplace

I was contemplating a lot on whether or not to include this in today’s newsletter. TWID was supposed to be a light hearted commentary on the inconsequential happenings of design Twitter, but this isn’t that.

This week, several women spoke up about the inappropriate & downright manipulative behavior of a certain Nice Guy™ CEO (If you want to know who it was, just look through some quote Tweets).

Here’s the thread that kicked it off.

I don’t want to throw gasoline on any fires, but I think it’s really important to amplify these stories. If we don’t call it out, it will continue.

It’s horrible, but abuse of power & workplace harassment happens way too often, and speaking up takes a lot of guts.

@dannpetty reviews 100 portfolios (again)

Dann is back with another banger of a video, this time covering even more designer portfolios. In this 35 min masterclass, Dann shares his first impressions & provides some invaluable advice on improving the presentation of your work.

He's done a few of these now, and I strongly advise everyone with a portfolio to watch them. Dann is a veteran, and we can all learn a little something from his experience.

Making noise & engagement farming

Engagement farming is a universal practice across the internet, but it feels like design Twitter (ya, we’re still calling it that) has gotten especially bad on that front lately.

Design Dopamine 💊

It’s always so hard to pick just one project to highlight, but I gotta give it to Fons Mans this week. I mean just look at this ↓

Nespresso skins by @FonsMans

I’m more of a tea guy myself, but if a coffee machine can look this good, I might need to get one…

I think we can all agree that Fons isn’t bad at this whole “design” thing … Unfortunately, you can’t get one of these quite yet, but you can sign up for the waitlist on kloffie.shop.

⚠️ not sponsored, just really cool

That’s a wrap for WK30

Thanks for reading, if you enjoyed this issue (or hated it), please let me know in the comments (or xeet at me)

If you have an idea for how I can improve TWID or want to suggest something for next week’s issue, use the suggestion box.

Love you all, have a great weekend

- @aleksliving