If you opened up Facebook today, you might have noticed that the “friends” icon has changed.
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Victor was inspired to take on this project after stumbling upon a file showing the female figure with a literal chip in her shoulder to mark where the male figure would be placed in front.
“I assumed no ill intentions, just a lack of consideration”, she wrote. The new design also removes an actual “chip” on the woman’s shoulder, giving her instead “robust” shoulders.
This is not the only icon on Facebook where the women will now be in the front as even the group icon has been redesigned to give more importance to the feminine participation.
As mentioned by a blog post victor wrote, she is now highly aware of symbolism in icons inside and outside of Facebook.
Personally, I think the new hairstyle more strongly resembles hockey hair than a bob, but whatever.
Victor originally wanted to draw a double silhouette that was of the same size without indicating who was in the foreground. The male icon also got a more modern makeover. The magnitude of the symbolism of Facebook’s seemingly innocuous icons is something designer Caitlin victor realized not too long after she started working at the company.
WASHINGTON-Facebook just made a subtle design change to its icons that probably won’t be noticed by the vast majority of its users but could profoundly influence perceptions of women. Dozens of iterations later, I abandoned this approach after failing to make an icon that didn’t look like a two headed mythical beast.
It might not sound like much, but changing these small icons that we see every day can shape our perspectives, from both design and representation point of view.
The Facebook staffer chose to scrap the old “friends icon”, which showed a man standing in front of a woman, flipping it so the lady is in pole position.
The current Facebook symbol for work is a briefcase. Which population carried briefcases and in which era?
One reaction that has nearly predictably been evoked as a result of the gender icon change is rage, at least from one section of web users.
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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.
