The letter has its obvious appeal. Flexible in shape, one of the few capital letters that remains symmetrical whether it’s cut vertically or horizontally (the others are H, O and I), X is easily recognizable no matter how you turn it. It signals an end. A marker on a map. When a movie is too far gone to be rated, it’s represented by X. It belongs to revolutionaries (Malcolm X) and punks (the band X). It represents a kiss and, in math, an unknown quantity. XXX is pornography — the first real currency on the Internet. X can be the hidden conspiracy in “The X-Files” or short for Ecstasy, the drug popular at raves in the ’90s.
Twitter, which has been fueled by chaotic energy at every step since Elon Musk bought it last October, unveiled its new name and logo on Monday.New brandThe launch of X is no exception. Users of X (which some have semi-affectionately referred to as the “bird app”) have a lot to ponder as they adjust to their new environment. For example: If it’s no longer called Twitter, are posts still tweets? What sound will X make when it flies over Silicon Valley? A whoosh? Why did Musk choose it?
Maybe it has something to do with his age. “X” took on a cult status in the 1990s, after Douglas Coupland’s 1991 novel, “Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture,” became a hit.
“We were in our 20s when we were called Generation X,” said Anthony Sperduti, 50, founder of the branding studio Mythology. “So maybe X felt good to us because it seeped into our brains.” Musk, 52, fits squarely into that group.
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In the 1990s, X was kind of cool for marketing. It represented a rejection of authority—you could imagine Bart Simpson writing X on his bedroom wall with a marker—while also being assimilated to mass consumerism. X was a symbol of a non-branded product, so it could be rebellious or mass-produced.
Big business also got in on the “X” bandwagon, trying to bottle the decade’s alternative energy. The X Games, short for “extreme” in reference to sports like snowboarding, began in 1995 and weren’t allowed into the Olympics until 1998. In 2001, the Xbox video game console was introduced.
Musicians and trendsetters have used the letters extensively when creating companies. In 1991, Eli Bernards and Adam Silverman opened the Los Angeles clothing store XLARGE (a favorite of the Furry Kids). Kim Gordon and Daisy von Voss founded their clothing line X-Girl in 1994.
But X also has its limitations.
“As a logo, it doesn’t make sense,” Michael Locke, 64, a partner at 2×4, a brand consultancy based in New York and Beijing, said of the new logo. “It’s about negation or cancellation. Crossing it out.”
Regardless, Gen X was the first generation to be named after an alphabetic person, and even if they didn’t like the moniker, they were proud of their indefinability. The name stuck. And it really seems to have left the longest, strongest impression on Musk. (Musk did not respond to a request for comment.)
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Indeed, Musk seems to have a special liking for the letter X. He named his rocket company SpaceX, a Tesla car Model X, and one of his children X Æ a-12, or X for short. Musk’s second company, X.com, was founded in 1999, the year when “Generation X continues to shine,” and in 2001 it merged with another company to become PayPal.
As a single letter, X had few rivals for branding until Apple introduced a lowercase i in the iMac in 1998. Compared to the violent slash of the X, the i seemed optimistic, self-referential, and cheerfully anthropomorphic—a small dot, like a head, perched atop a small, upright body, ready to take over the world. A millennial letter, you might say, to replace the self-negative X and itsUnmanaged energy.
Musk marks everything he touches with an X, seemingly begging the world to remember the golden years when he began building his empire (not a typical Gen X instinct).
In some ways, “it was a choice without a choice, not to provide the narrative behind it until later,” Locke said. He said it was not the point what logo the company put on the site. “Abnormality seemed to be at the heart of it.”
Rock likens it to “leather motorcycle jackets at a Tesla launch,” more like Xbox or X Games branding than any real 1990s counterculture use.
“I could imagine it fitting into Elon Musk’s image of alternative, edgy, mysterious or punk, but it comes across as awkwardly tech-kid-ish,” he said.
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In the end, if Musk succeeds in making X the “omnipotent company” he wants, then the logo won’t matter. This may be the most suitable result for Generation X.