:P :S ;)

I’ve been thinking about emoticons, recently. But not in the way that we think of them now, but remembering when they were new and, if not exciting, then at least odd and unusual enough to be interesting. For example, I have fond(-ish) memories of Ben and Jason’s 1999 album Emoticons, which capitalized on the then emerging trend with this cover:

And if you think that title has aged badly, you should check out songs like “LOL (Means Laughing Out Loud)” and “I Can Haz Chronologically Challenged Referenz?”.*

(* – This is, of course, not true. Instead, they did gentle and inoffensive pop songs like this.)

But it’s odd; I use emoticons myself, and kind of hate myself for it – I don’t really like them, you see, but I use them non-ironically nonetheless, somehow – but I can still remember when they seemed smart and clever uses of typography much in the same way that typing 07734 and turning the calculator upside down was so exciting as a kid. i-D Magazine, with its logo turned on the side so that it looked like a winking face (the cover of each issue featuring someone recreating the pose to varying degrees of success), was the zenith of hipster Britain media for years, and that logo was part of it. It genuinely seemed smart, at the time (It launched in 1980), like someone had found a new way to communicate an idea at odds with language itself.

Nowadays, the idea seems… what? Boring? Twee? Both? Probably, and those are fair takes on the idea, and also fair fates for what seemed such a new and fresh idea almost 30 years ago. But just realizing that, thinking about how an idea I remember being stylish and interesting at one time has become so devalued and… beyond mainstream, makes me feel at once both old and ridiculously happy about how easily graphic design can seep into the real world and become something else.

Related posts:

1. Say Hello To The New Logo, Pretty Much Exactly The Same As The Old Logo
2. Threat Level: Phlegm
3. Look What You’re Doing
4. “It Coulda Come Off Without A Hitch.”
5. Drop The Big One And See What Happens