Facebook unveils new friends icon

According to the post, victor began with the individual glyphs and noticed that the lady icon had a chip in her shoulder and realised that the chip was positioned exactly where the man icon would be placed in front of her, as in the friends icon.

(Also see: Facebook Changed Its Logo – Can You Spot the Difference?). Thanks to Caitlin victor, one of Facebook’s designers, the “Friend” icon unassumingly sitting in the upper right corner of the social network’s page has undergone some changes in recent months. It’s a small icon, on the top right part of the screen and most of us probably never look at it at all, but Facebook Design Manager Caitlin victor did, and noticed something.

Upon consideration, we realize briefcases were carried by men, and being a gender-equality supporter, victor started thinking of other ways in which “work” could be translated in an icon that is representative for the majority of people on Earth. “I placed the lady, slightly smaller, in front of the man”. While that news is cool for typeface enthusiasts, an even bigger but subtler design shift arrived to Facebook six months ago when the Friends icon changed. “As a woman, educated at a women’s college, it was hard not to read into the symbolism of the current icon”, wrote victor. Dozens of iterations later, I abandoned this approach after failing to make an icon that didn’t look like a two headed mythical beast.

Victor says the new male and female silhouettes have already been shipped out for desktop, and appropriate male and female icons are now designated in the new profile creation process.

Victor further wrote that the self-led project has now placed her on high alert for symbolism in icons.

I try to question all icons, especially those that feel the most familiar.

She believed that it did not seem fair that that all friend requests should be represented by a man. So, she designed a silhouette for cases where a gendered icon was inappropriate.

Victor also redesigned the female icon’s “Darth Vader-like” silhouette, giving it a “slightly more shapely bob” and reconfigured the group friends icon (above) to put women out front.