Twitter has switched over to its Chirp font - The Verge

Twitter has switched over to its Chirp fontTwitter has changed the way the platform looks, including changing the font to its Chirp font.Image: Twitter

Twitter is rolling out its Chirp font to the Twitter app and feed, meaning that your daily scrolling might look a little different than you’re used to.

Twitter’s main account posted about the change Wednesday. I’m personally seeing the new font on the web and on the iOS app, but one colleague isn’t seeing it anywhere, so it may not have rolled out to everyone yet.

Twitter detailed the Chirp font as one part of a broader brand refresh unveiled in January. “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 blog post.

At the time, Twitter used it in things like promotional materials and graphics, but it wasn’t the font you’d see in the feed or when navigating the app. Twitter’s Derrit DeRouen, the creative director for the company’s global brand, said in January that it was his “personal desire” to make Chirp the typeface for the Twitter product in a thread about the new font. At the time, he didn’t commit to when that might happen.

The new font also has a fun Easter egg: you can tweet the Twitter logo if you type [CHIRPBIRDICON] in the tweet compose box. That’s “chirp,” “bird,” and “icon” all mashed into one word, and it has to be all caps for the icon to show up, in my testing.

On the iOS app, the icon appeared in the compose box for me after typing [CHIRPBIRDICON], but on the web, it didn’t appear until I actually sent a tweet including the phrase and brackets.

The font isn’t the only visual change introduced on Wednesday. “We’ve updated our colors to be high contrast and a lot less blue — a change made to draw attention to the photos and videos you create and share,” Twitter said in a thread posted by its design account.

The company is promising to roll out new colors sometime soon, though it’s unclear exactly what that means. People who subscribe to the paid Twitter Blue subscription service can already tweak the colors of the app and change the color of the app’s icon, though the service is only available for iOS in Canada and Australia right now.

There’s also a change to the way the follow button looks that could prove frustrating. Now, when you already follow someone, the follow button’s background isn’t filled in, and when you aren’t following someone, it’s filled in with color. As writer Brian Merchant pointed out, this is the opposite of the way the follow button worked before, so be careful that you don’t accidentally unfollow people.