Twitter recently introduced some changes in its appearance and font. The modifications have been made for both mobile and desktop sites. The new font, called Chirp, was revealed in January, but was introduced globally on August 12. The changes in colour and typography were done to “clean up a lot of visual clutter,” Twitter said.
“Chirp strikes the balance between messy and sharp to amplify the fun and irreverence of a Tweet, but can also carry the weight of seriousness when needed,” Twitter said in a blogpost.
All western language texts now aligns left, making it easier to read as you scroll. Non-western languages remain unchanged, the company added.
But users aren’t exactly thrilled. Some of them reacted with memes to express their confusion and displeasure over the changes.
“Why does the new Twitter font have to be so horrible?? It feels like trying to read a Serif font that has the wrong kerning and I hate it, did no one review this first?” tweeted Maxwell Fisher.
“PLS PLS PLS CHANGE IT BACK," pleaded Jennah.
Wictoria/ash claimed the font gave the user a headache. "please change it back i had it for 30 minutes and my head hurts i can't look at it.”
Joining the chorus of voices against the new font, Mrs wing tweeted, “The new twitter font and colour changes are terrible. why does your design team hate colours so much? take us back to the time when we were able to choose whatever colour we wanted for the links and separators and background.”
“I don't like this chirp-heavy-web and all TwitterChirp fonts. Seems like in near future, you will be asking for premium subscription for font customization,” tweeted user Puvipavan.
“Wow the twitter users are vocal about the new design and they are not happy. They're discontented with the font change and with the whole accidental unfollow thing,” tweeted another user.
Twitter will now feature higher colour contrasts of likes and buttons, and not feature as many “grey backgrounds and unnecessary divider lines.”
While it might feel weird at first, these updates make us more accessible, unique, and focused on you and what you’re talking about, the social media giant reassured in the blogpost.
But user Chris Boyd disagreed, and tweeted, “Changing the following button from white text in a blue button to black text in a white background button isn't a great design choice and will probably cause lots of accidental unfollows.”
Derrit DeRouen, creative director of Twitter, had in January said that it was his “personal desire” to make Chirp the new typeface of Twitter, without revealing details about when it might happen.
“Do we eventually see Chirp as the typeface for the product? It's my personal desire, and the work on legibility, density and weight has already begun. There is more refining to do, more languages to build, but the hard work will be worth the benefit of having a holistic brand,” DeRouen's January 28 tweet read.
(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)
