Twitter Updates In-App Visual Elements: Logging into Twitter today, you might have noticed some subtle changes in design and layout, slight formatting changes that might have seemed like a glitch in The Matrix, or as if the ongoing blocking was starting to mess with your head.
It’s not – well, at least not in this context.
Today, Twitter’s design team revealed a number of updates that have been made to improve the presentation of information in the app, in line with the branding update the company announced earlier this year.
Notice anything different?
Today, we released a few changes to the way Twitter looks on the web and on your phone. While it might feel weird at first, these updates make us more accessible, unique, and focused on you and what you’re talking about.
Let’s take a deeper look. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/vCUomsgCNA
— Twitter Design (@TwitterDesign) August 11, 2021
First, Twitter’s updated format now uses the custom font “Chirp,” which the company introduced back in January as part of a brand refresh.
So your test tweet will now look a little different, and all text in Western languages is now left-aligned, making it easier to read when scrolling. Non-Western languages remain unchanged.
It’s not a big change, but it’s noticeable, and it’s probably the most obvious shift that messes up your perception in the app. Do these letters look a little thinner or something? Yes, they do, because the font has changed, which has affected the presentation.
In addition, Twitter says it has updated the colors of the app “to make them more contrasty and less blue.” This change is meant to draw attention to the photos and videos in the app, which will soon see another, more significant update: Twitter is experimenting with a new image format that will take up all the horizontal space in the stream, eliminating the current rounded borders of your photos.
This could make a big difference in your approach to posting images in the app – it’s worth noting that Twitter also added the display of full images in the timeline back in May.
The addition of contrast will further improve the app’s visual presentation and make it even more prominent in the feed of tweets.
Twitter also updated the look of the app’s buttons to highlight actions you can take at any given moment, and removed various gray backgrounds and dividing lines to reduce screen clutter.
“We’ve also increased the space to make the text easier to read. This is just the beginning of more visual updates as Twitter becomes more focused on you and what you have to say!”
So, yes, Twitter does look different, and it’s not just about you. And while it’s not a significant change per se, the visual focus in particular is noteworthy, especially for marketers considering new ways to highlight their tweets in a stream of increasingly lively tweets.
And this may just be the beginning, Twitter’s head of product, Keyvon Bakepour, also noted that the update is “a small beginning as part of a broader app update that’s on the way.”
It probably refers to the app’s broader shift to creator monetization tools and expanding its reach, and it will be interesting to see how else Twitter can change its design.
Bakepour also shared this image, which shows, among other things, a reformatted bottom feature bar and the Explore magnifying glass icon replaced with a Spaces tab.
Could this be a sign of things to come? We’ll have to wait and see.
