The social media giant last week made a slight change in its main logo, and before we think it’s all over, Facebook is introducing some new friends icons. Following a post on Medium, Facebook design manager Caitlin Winner explains how she changed the social network’s icons. From the image above you can see that Facebook’s new friends icon brings women to the fore.
She also noticed that while the male friend icon was symmetrical, the female character literally had what she called a chip on her shoulder. The change has also been implemented on the Facebook the group friends icon. She writes ;
[signoff icon=”quote-circled”]”As a woman, educated at a women’s college, it was hard not to read into the symbolism of the current icon; the woman was quite literally in the shadow of the man, she was not in a position to lean in, My first idea was to draw a double silhouette, two people of equal sizes without a hard line indicating who was in front. Dozens of iterations later, I abandoned this approach after failing to make an icon that didn’t look like a two headed mythical beast. I placed the lady, slightly smaller, in front of the man. As a result of this project, I’m on high alert for symbolism I try to question all icons, especially those that feel the most familiar.” [/signoff]
