Twitter Introduces New Design Updates Including New Fonts, Color Changes, Etc.

If you log in to Twitter today, you may notice some subtle changes in the layout and design. The subtle format adjustments may feel like a glitch in Matrix, or it may seem like continuous crashes are starting to bother you. 

That’s because Twitter has released a few changes to the way it looks on the web and your phone. In January this year, its design team outlined several updates to be implemented in order to improve in-app presentations based on the company’s brand.  

First, the updated format now uses Twitter’s custom “Chirp” font, which was introduced in the brand update in January. As a result, your tweet test will now look different, and all Western text will now be left-aligned to make it easier to read when scrolling. Non-Western languages won’t change. 

This doesn’t seem like a big change, but it’s obvious when you spot it. The font alphabet looks a bit thinner which has affected the way Twitter is presented.

As confirmed by Jane Manchun Wong, Twitter has also updated the app’s colours “for more contrast and less blues.” This change is intended to bring attention to the photos and videos in the app. Twitter takes up all of the horizontal space in the stream, and the rounded corners of the stream are photographs. 

This can significantly affect the way you publish images in the app. The added contrast further enhances the visual presentation of the app and makes it more visible in the Tweet feed. 

Twitter has also changed the way the in-app buttons look. The purpose is to highlight what you can always do, removing various gray backgrounds and individual lines to avoid cluttered forms. “We also increased space to make text easier to read. This is only the start of more visual updates as Twitter becomes more centered on you and what you have to say,” Twitter says. 

So it’s official! Twitter now looks different. This may be a small change, but the visual focus deserves special attention. This is especially true for social media marketers looking at new ways to differentiate their tweets from an increasingly busy tweet stream. 

And this is probably just the beginning. Twitter’s Product Lead, Kaivon Bakepur actually confirmed in a tweet that the update is a small start that is part of a much larger update to the running app. This could be due to the widespread adoption of content creation tools by apps to monetise and expand use cases, and it will be interesting to see other ways Twitter can improve its design. 

Beikpur also tweeted the above image, which includes, among other things, a reformatted bottom toolbar with a magnifying glass icon replaced with a spacebar tab. 

Could this be a sign of the future? We have to wait.