There was something almost poignant in the Twitter thread last week from one of the original designers of the site’s blue bird logo, soon to be extinct. Martin Grasser recalled how, in 2012, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey had commissioned him, in terms familiar to creatives everywhere: “There was essentially no brief,” Grasser suggested, “other than ‘we want a new bird, and it should be as good as the Apple and Nike logo’. Twitter had made some sort of flying goose – but Jack wanted something simpler.”
Grasser went away and started sketching different real birds, watching them in flight, listening to birdsong as he worked. His eventual design, after thousands of iterations, was based on a hovering hummingbird with a truncated beak and puffed-up chest. Grasser’s thread showed how he had superimposed 15 overlapping circles on the logo to give the bird its optimum “friendly” rotundity (the exact opposite of Elon Musk’s unnerving new black X branding, which puts a cross next to just about every feeling of alienation). Grasser’s valedictory thread was a brief masterclass in how graphic design can tap into human emotion. His bird, meanwhile, will inevitably become exhibit A in the various museums of lost logos that can be found in dustier corners of the internet, alongside the blue globe of Pan Am and the torn ticket stub of Blockbuster Video.
Delays expected
Researching a story about the never-ending construction of HS2, I came across a book in the British Library called The London and Birmingham Railway, With The Home And Country Scenes On Each Side Of The Line. It was published in 1838 to mark the opening of Robert Stephenson’s world-first intercity mainline. The book’s author, T Roscoe, can hardly contain his sense of “national exultation” at what is “unquestionably the greatest public work ever executed, either in ancient or modern times” – a feat achieved in “five short years” beside which the “construction of the Great Chinese Wall sinks totally in the shade”. A sequel to Roscoe’s book, concerned with the “popular wonder and admiration” for the successor to Stephenson’s line, is no doubt on the publisher’s schedules for 2041.
Mattel’s purple patch
Accessing my inner Ken, I saw Barbie last week with my wife and daughters. The one-off joys of Greta Gerwig’s creation prompted unfortunate invasive thoughts of endless future toy-related franchises trying to imitate the film’s success. Inevitably, some are already in the works. “Mattel Films” apparently has plans for a “surreal” film based on Barney the purple dinosaur, one of the very worst features of my memories of parenting. It will, its producers told Variety, “take inspiration from Being John Malkovich” and “feature adult themes for millennials” – a billing that reminds you that the theme music to Barney, “I love you, you love me”, was a principal soundtrack in the interrogation rooms of Guantánamo Bay, the ultimate “futility music” designed to break prisoners’ spirits.
Mercury rising
This week, Sotheby’s in London will display artefacts from its September sale, Freddie Mercury: A World of His Own. Beside the singer’s silver Tiffany moustache comb will be the original doodlings that became Bohemian Rhapsody. Written on a British Midland Airways calendar, Mercury’s pencil notation and crossings-out look like a pop version of TS Eliot’s much-amended manuscript of The Waste Land. As with Eliot, the false starts are as fascinating as the final masterpiece. Mongolian Rhapsody, as the song was once called, included the line, “Mama, there’s a war began / I’ve got to leave tonight...” before getting to the one now in everyone’s head. The manuscript is expected to fetch £1.2m.
• Tim Adams is an Observer columnist
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