Design Plus Ultra

The Use Of Smileys And How They Affect Us As A Reader

Posted on 04. Sep, 2009 by Daniel in Articles

When communicating online via a blog post, email or any other form of message, the essential non-verbal interaction is completely missing. Often it is more important how you say something, rather than what you say.

So what is there to do about it?

Not Everybody Can Write Like Shakespeare

And that’s the reason why there are other ways to express your emotions in the world of online communication – the famous smileys. But wait, they aren’t even that famous nowadays, or at least not anymore.

While it is true that yellow circles with faces would be quite annoying if they were printed in our daily newspaper, it is reasonable for a personal blogger to make use of them. Still, those tiny little icons expressing a bit of how you emotionally feel about a topic are seen very rare. Just take your ten favorite blogs for example and count how many of them use them. You would be very lucky if the result was more than one.

They Affect Us As A Reader

I can ensure you that you will get a completely different impression of a text when emoticons are used compared to a text without them. You don’t actively notice that, because it happens subliminal. This certainty is also utilised in the advertising industry. Did you ever notice that the clock hands always point to ten past ten on ads?

Take a look at the picture above. Which clock seems more appealing to you? I say most of you will choose the left one. Do you also know why? It’s because the left clock is smiling at you. The hands point to the upper left and upper right direction. Up always means something good, and the upper right pointer tells your subconsciousness the keyword future. Do a Google search for watch ads and you will notice almost all of the ads have the same scheme. There are just a few cases where this isn’t true. These are the small little details where you can seperate a “designer” from a professional designer.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
- William Shakespeare

Bear those things in mind when designing your next piece for a client, writing an email et cetera.

Have you made any smiliar observations related to this topic? Add them in the comments!