- cross-posted to:
- design
- crappydesign
- technews
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- design
- crappydesign
- technews
- technology@beehaw.org
Twitter’s new X logo wasn’t made by an in-house designer. It’s from an old podcast hosted by one of the cult that Elon took from his replies.
So, does that mean he doesn’t own the copyright to the logo if it is is a generic Unicode character?
That’s a font/design issue, not a character issue. If that were the case, then no one could use any letters (or unicode characters) for their logo.
Fonts are definitely subject to copyright. That’s why there are open fonts and why not all of the fonts on windows are just thrown into Linux for compatibility.
Edit: forgot to finish with that the inverse is also true. If that X is indistinguishable from something copylefted or public domain then he will be facing a lot of trouble trying to copyright it.
The thing is, fonts are copyrightable but typefaces aren’t. Typefaces are the symbols, fonts are the files that contain all the symbols along with the formatting and everything else that let you use the typefaces in software. So he probably can’t copyright the symbol itself and it’s doubtful he could get a trademark on it either. But at the same time, copyright is also weird in that if he made an image and had that X in it, he would have the copyright to that specific image. But that’s only insomuch as anyone else would also own the copyright of an image they made with the stupid X in it.
That’s my point. If he used a copyrighted/copylefted font, he might be in trouble. But he doesn’t get in trouble just for using an unicode character.