Social Media giant Facebook unveils new friends icon

Social networking service Facebook has introduced a new friends icon. According to thenextweb.com, Caitlin Winner, a design manager at Facebook, wrote in a Medium post that she discovered that while the male glyph had broad, fully rounded shoulders, the female one had an odd indentation in the shoulder on the left side, a marker, she later discovered, for the male glyph to be placed in front of her.


Read: Gmail Users can now undo Sent Mail




Winner wrote that she assumed no ill intentions, just a lack of consideration. But as a lady with two robust shoulders, the chip offended her.
Winner also wrote that as a woman, educated at a women’s college, it was hard not to read into the symbolism of the current icon, the woman was quite literally in the shadow of the man, she was not in a position to lean in.

Winner decided on putting the woman in front, slightly smaller than the man, after iterations where both the man and the woman were placed equally within the icon
She also repositioned the position of people in the ‘Groups’ icon, again placing the woman in front.
Winner further wrote that the self-led project has now placed her on high alert for symbolism in icons.