Social Icons

Facebook Logo (source)

Take a look at the icons for your social media sites. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr. Look at the shape and font choice. Look at the letters that compose these icons. Notice any similarities? First of all, they're all blue.

Take a look at the letters. All of them are lowercase: f, t, t, f. Now look at the f's and flip them. Now look at the t's and flip them. In this Helvetica font style all the letters look the same upside-down. All of our social media is dominated by one letter shape.

Is this the result of some market research? Did people decide that the most social color is blue? Or does blue just look good on the internet? Helvetica, the font, is a result of some research and even a documentary. It is known as a clear, normal looking font, which was created to be easily readable for sign use. On the internet font is becoming less and less important. Content rules, and fonts like Arial and Helvetica dominate web pages.