Twitter小鸟是谁发明的？
Who Made That Twitter Bird?

“Twitter is the bird, the bird is Twitter,” the social networking company’s former creative director, Doug Bowman, said in a 2012 announcement about the latest redesign of the Twitter logo. Its slightly goofier predecessor had a tufted head and was sometimes accompanied by the company name; Bowman’s new bird was a sleeker update. Resembling a mountain bluebird with a dash of hummingbird thrown in, the Twitter bird has a beak and body that point toward the sky in what Bowman called “the ultimate representation of freedom, hope and limitless possibility.” Unlike previous iterations since the company’s 2006 launch, all of which were named “Larry the Bird” after the Boston Celtics legend, the current logo is known simply as the Twitter Bird.

“Twitter就是这只鸟，这只鸟就是Twitter，”社交网络公司Twitter的前任创意总监道格·鲍曼(Doug Bowman)2012年宣布Twitter标识的最新设计时说。它的上一代略显笨拙，头上有一簇毛，有时附上公司的名称；鲍曼的新小鸟线条更明快。它类似山地蓝知更鸟，带有一点蜂鸟的影子，它的嘴和身子伸向天空，用鲍曼的话说，是“自由、希望和无限可能性的终极体现”。从2006年公司创立时的版本到此前的版本都命名为“大鸟拉里”(Larry the Bird)，这个名字来自波士顿凯尔特人队的传奇人物拉里·伯德(Larry Bird)。目前的标识被简单地称为Twitter小鸟。

The original Larry, to which the present icon bears little resemblance, was created by Simon Oxley, a British graphic designer who has since produced many mascots for online companies. The blue bird was just one illustration he offered for sale on the iStock website in 2006, where someone at Twitter bought it for about $15 (you can still download a variation of it for the bargain price of $11). As early adopters of the platform may recall, Oxley’s bird is a slender, serene fellow, adorned only by a stylized eye and perched on a branch that splits off into an elegant Japanese--influenced gathering of curlicues.

现在的标识和最初的大鸟拉里几乎没有相似之处，最初版本是英国平面设计师西蒙·奥克斯利(Simon Oxley)创作，他后来为很多网络公司设计了吉祥物。那只蓝鸟只是他2006年在iStock网站上销售的一个插图，Twitter公司的人花了约15美元买下了它（现在你仍可以以11美元的特价下载一个类似的插图）。Twitter的早期用户们可能还记得，奥克斯利的小鸟更纤细、安静，只装饰着一只艺术化的眼睛，栖息在树枝上，那个树枝分裂成一个优雅的日式花饰。

When Twitter selected his design, Oxley wasn’t even aware of the company’s existence. “I seem to recall a friend sending me an email telling me,” he says now. “It was fun to witness more and more sightings and see CNN and the BBC mentioning it with images of my bird alongside the story.” But because companies aren’t permitted to use iStock images as official logos, Twitter soon left Oxley’s bird behind. Biz Stone, a company founder, came up with the initial design for the first in-house bird logo, fine-tuning it by 2009 with the help of Philip Pascuzzo, a designer. A year later, they created yet another version of the logo — its cartoonish features silhouetted away — which was eventually further streamlined by Bowman into its current form.

Twitter选择奥克斯利的设计时，他甚至没听说过这家公司。“我好像记得有个朋友给我发邮件说起这家公司，”他说，“我越来越多地看到自己的图标，CNN和BBC在提到该公司的创业故事时也会提到我的小鸟图标，这让我挺高兴的。”但是因为公司不准使用iStock上的图标作为正式标识，Twitter很快抛下了奥克斯利的小鸟。公司创始人之一比兹·斯通(Biz Stone)想出了内部小鸟标识的最初设计，2009年在设计师菲利普·帕斯库佐(Philip Pascuzzo)的帮助下对它进行了微调。一年后，他们创作了另一个版本——卡通化的剪影——它最后被鲍曼进一步精简成了现在的样子。

As for Oxley, though his bird is no longer in wide circulation, he expresses only pleasure at having been a part of tech-start-up history — and he remains a loyal fan of the species. “I do like birds, very much,” he says. “I grew up in the English countryside, surrounded by them. Dawn chorus begins each morning at 4 a.m.” Tweet, tweet.

至于奥克斯利，虽然他的小鸟不再广泛流传，但他为自己成为一家科技公司创办史的一部分而感到高兴。他仍是那个物种的忠实粉丝。“我真的很喜欢鸟，”他说，“我在英国乡下长大，周围全是鸟。清晨4点就能听到鸟鸣。”啾啾，啾啾。

本文最初发表于2014年8月8日。

翻译：王相宜