Twitter, the world-wide online news and social networking service, threw a party last week and they turned to Taro’s Origami Studio for some custom origami inspired decorations.  Not only were the models our own unique creation, they were also made to be as exact a replica to the logo as possible.

This request provided two very specific and very fun limitations on the Taro’s Origami design team.  First, the twitter logo has a shape that is recognized worldwide so the design would need to be precise enough to be instantly recognizable.  Second, the twitter logo itself is entirely negative space, and doesn’t have any lines across it at all, so there aren’t any places to hide creases very well.  In a nutshell, the model needed to be both complex enough to look like the logo, but simple enough to not have crease lines everywhere.

As is always the case in origami design, the staff went through a few different versions of the bird until the the final result was reached.

Here is an initial attempt at the Twitter bird, but as you can see on the right, the beak wasn’t quite in the correct place and the wings and tail especially were distracting with all the extra shaping creases.

Those aspects were all taken into account on the final version of the bird, where the focus was on a simpler model with very clean lines so that they don’t draw focus from the logo.

Once this final version of the bird was approved by the Twitter team, Taro’s went into production on the 15 larger models for the event.  Specialty paper was chosen by Twitter, so that there would know exactly what the final birds would look like.  A final request for the model was that it be created in a way that it could be freestanding as well.  Using their vast origami knowledge from over the years, the team was able to integrate that feature without any changes to the outward appearance of the model.

Here you can take a good look at the finished versions of the birds, from the creasing to the sizing, and from the production to the final results!