If you hear a bird Tweet outside your window, what comes to mind? What if that bird was blue? Would you picture the Twitter bird logo? Many people can immediately recognize the Twitter logo, but do they know how it originated?
 
Name Game:

Did you know that all the Twitter birds from 2006 until the 2012 redesign shared the same name? All birds were referred to as Larry the Bird, and it was long assumed the bird was named after the Boston Celtics’ basketball legend.


I mean, how many other birds are named Larry?
 
In 2011, the nickname was confirmed by Peter Stringer, the director of interactive media for the Boston Celtics, when he tweeted Twitter co-founder Biz Stone asking directly if the logo was named after Celtic legend Larry Bird and received a “yes it is,” right back to him. There was nothing to doubt at that point. The nickname was confirmed.
 
But how did the bird get his name? One can only speculate at this time, but there are some pretty straightforward clues. Biz Stone, born in the seventies, grew up in Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. He was witness to the Celtics’ 80’s run in which Larry Bird helped bring the team to three championships, all while earning three MVP titles for himself. Sports in the 80’s was fun for any child, but especially so for those who loved basketball.
 
With the redesign of 2012, the Twitter bird lost its nickname and has since been referred to as “Twitter Bird”. We’ll always know the Twitter bird logo as Larry the Bird.

 
Designers:

In the eight years that Twitter has existed, they’ve had three designers for their birds. The first, Simon Oxley, designed the company’s logo without even realizing it. After moving back to the United Kingdom from Japan in 2002, Oxley began a career of freelance design in which he contributed over nine thousand stock images to the company iStockPhoto. It is on this site that Twitter found their first bird, the first Larry. Someone at Twitter purchased the stock photo, and while the exact cost is unknown, it is believed to cost less than $15. They then used this photo for a few years before the first redesign. It is rumored
 
The next few birds were designed by Biz Stone and Philip Pascuzzo. In 2009, co-founder Biz Stone developed the first in house design of the bird. It was good, but he still went on to hire Pascuzzo to tweak it a bit, and the pair came up with a great next edition, complete with features and an eyeball. It was the most lifelike vector, but soon was replaced in 2010 by both Stone and Pascuzzo again with a similar circular sketch, with less features, but just as much pizzazz.
 
The Twitter bird logo went untouched until Doug Bowman, former creative director at Twitter redesigned in 2012. It isn’t clear why they dropped Larry as a nickname, but the redesign is possibly the best of the birds. The bird has grown up and lost some of its more cartoonish, child-like features, but it is still youthful, fresh, and recognizable.
 
Brand Recognition:
 
When the rebranding in 2012 happened, Twitter ditched its name and flew solo with just the Twitter bird logo as a brand. On their blog, they wrote that the bird was a “universally recognizable symbol” of the company. It’s hard to argue with that. Anyone to see the blue bird can immediately identify it with the Twitter brand. The blog continued with, “Twitter is the bird, and the bird is Twitter.”
 
Their assumption proved correct. Anyone who sees the blue bird can immediately identify it with the Twitter brand. Now the Twitter hashtag #TwitterBird is used more often by users to Tweet pictures of things that resemble the Twitter bird, than the company Tweeting any official information about the logo.
 
For example, a mother recently posted a picture of her daughter and her recent find: a peanut which was curved just so that the figure resembled Twitter’s logo. Or how about the university resident assistant who posted about cutting Twitter-like birds out of paper for the future residents. Some other Twitter users posted pictures of blue birds and wondered if they were the real-life version of the Twitter bird.

What about you? Which Twitter bird logo do like best? Regardless of design, we'll always know him as Larry.