你用Twitter嗎?你可知是誰發明了Twitter小鳥?

"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就是這隻鳥，這隻鳥就是Twitter，”社交網絡公司Twitter的前任創意總監道格·鮑曼(Doug Bowman)2012年宣佈Twitter標識的最新設計時說。它的上一代略顯笨拙，頭上有一簇毛，有時附上公司的名稱；鮑曼的新小鳥線條更明快。它類似山地藍知更鳥，帶有一點蜂鳥的影子，它的嘴和身子伸向天空，用鮑曼的話說，是“自由、希望和無限可能性的終極體現”。從2006年公司創立時的版本到此前的版本都命名爲“大鳥拉里”(Larry the Bird)，這個名字來自波士頓凱爾特人隊的傳奇人物拉里·伯德(Larry Bird)。目前的標識被簡單地稱爲Twitter小鳥。

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.

現在的標識和最初的大鳥拉里幾乎沒有相似之處，最初版本是英國平面設計師西蒙·奧克斯利(Simon Oxley)創作，他後來爲很多網絡公司設計了吉祥物。那隻藍鳥只是他2006年在iStock網站上銷售的一個插圖，Twitter公司的人花了約15美元買下了它（現在你仍可以以11美元的特價下載一個類似的插圖）。Twitter的早期用戶們可能還記得，奧克斯利的小鳥更纖細、安靜，只裝飾着一隻藝術化的眼睛，棲息在樹枝上，那個樹枝分裂成一個優雅的日式花飾。

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選擇奧克斯利的設計時，他甚至沒聽說過這家公司。“我好像記得有個朋友給我發郵件說起這家公司，”他說，“我越來越多地看到自己的圖標，CNN和BBC在提到該公司的創業故事時也會提到我的小鳥圖標，這讓我挺高興的。”但是因爲公司不準使用iStock上的圖標作爲正式標識，Twitter很快拋下了奧克斯利的小鳥。公司創始人之一比茲·斯通(Biz Stone)想出了內部小鳥標識的最初設計，2009年在設計師菲利普·帕斯庫佐(Philip Pascuzzo)的幫助下對它進行了微調。一年後，他們創作了另一個版本——卡通化的剪影——它最後被鮑曼進一步精簡成了現在的樣子。

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.

至於奧克斯利，雖然他的小鳥不再廣泛流傳，但他爲自己成爲一家科技公司創辦史的一部分而感到高興。他仍是那個物種的忠實粉絲。“我真的很喜歡鳥，”他說，“我在英國鄉下長大，周圍全是鳥。清晨4點就能聽到鳥鳴。”啾啾，啾啾。