Emojis, a famous paper clip, and the serious need for cuteness 🌸🐶🌸

Around 1912, young women in Japan began experimenting with a new handwriting style called maru-moji – round characters decorated with hearts and stars. Cuteness was important, but the trend might have had more to do with a teenage rebellion against the rigid norms of Japanese society at the time. Department stores soon adopted the rounded aesthetic in their ads, and it eventually shaped manga and character design.

The Japanese have long had an appreciation for small, delicate, beautiful things, but it was the maru-moji trend that laid the groundwork for, and gave rise to, kawaii and its global dominance in our daily lives.

It’s an interesting parallel to the present-day world and Western writing. Emojis have been part of our daily communication for years now, and they've found their way from casual text messages between friends to business use and political messaging. Emojis have become our modern maru-moji – and for good reason. They soften digital communication, lower barriers, and add personality.

Playfulness in communication can go a long way. That's why funny ads tend to be effective: we simply start liking the brand or person who appears to be approachable, warm, and funny. Humor is a key to connection and to appreciating the other person.

From Emoticons to Emojis

How did we get emojis? I’ll tell you – but before emojis, there were emoticons ;)

Scott Fahlman has been credited with inventing :-) in 1982 to signify a joke on a bulletin board, but these ASCII symbols really started to become popular in the late 1990s when the internet and SMS texting gained popularity.

At that time, Japan was a trailblazer in mobile communications. I remember the wide-eyed guys at my first job at Satama Interactive. They had been in Tokyo and seen phones with color screens and picture messaging capabilities – novelties that didn’t exist in Europe or the USA just yet. And they had emojis.

In 1999, Shigetaka Kurita created the first 176 emoji symbols for NTT DOCOMO’s i-mode service. The Unicode Consortium, a body that standardizes text across platforms, officially recognized emoji characters in 2010. Apple, Microsoft, Google, and others soon integrated emojis into their operating systems, leading to their global breakthrough.

Emojis reached a kind of cultural peak in 2017 when The Emoji Movie came out, grossing $217.8 million worldwide against a $50 million production budget. Its huge success was attributed to the popularity and pervasiveness of emojis in our culture – not so much the story or direction.

Why did emojis take off? Because digital life is emotionally flat. We crave nuance – the wink, the shrug, and all the other countless gestures that words alone can’t carry. It’s why we post memes, use reaction GIFs, and why video feels so alive. These playful little add-ons fill the emotional gap in our online communication.

SMILE, IT's a roadblock

In the western culture, official signs are usually stripped from any signs of humanity or emotions. The faceless pictograms try very hard to inform clearly and universally – so much so that they sometimes invite humorous and unintentional interpretations.  

In Japan, roadwork and even tsunami evacuation signs can feature cute mascots – a smiling dolphin pointing toward higher ground, or a friendly character reminding people to stay calm near the construction site. The goal isn’t to make light of danger; it’s to make people listen and reduce stress. Fear can paralyze, but friendliness make life bearable and invites action.

Playfulness, even in serious contexts, can make communication more effective and more humane.

The Emotional X-Factor

Good design has an X-factor – something beyond efficiency or logic that creates a quiet bond between human and object. It might be a material, a curve, a sound, or a small visual cue that makes us feel something. That emotional response is what transforms design from mere function into connection.

What kind of emotions should design evoke? That depends on the context. In a banking app, we value trust and clarity; in clothing, we might look for confidence or comfort. The point is: emotion always plays a role.

When we design tools, usability and efficiency are essential. But emotional connection is what makes one solution stand out from another and improves user satisfaction. A hammer with an ergonomic handle is fine – but a hammer with a bright orange handle feels more efficient, more capable.

Competition isn’t won by those who simply solve the problem. Winners are those who solve a problem and create a feeling.

Clippy’s Heirs

Playfulness in digital design hasn’t always gone so well. Remember Clippy – that paper-clip-shaped digital assistant in MS Office? It was introduced in 1996 to help users with tasks but ended up annoying and frustrating a generation of office workers. Microsoft retired Clippy in 2007. Yet that impulse to humanize our tools never went away.

On the contrary, many modern software tools and productivity platforms have added delightful features to give us small moments of happiness or a sense of achievement when we complete a task and unlock a small visual reward. Many more apps use subtle animations, gamification, illustrations, and other design elements to reward and reassure us.

The same instinct that created kawaii and emojis is alive in product design: the desire to make technology less cold.

Playfulness in product design, when done right, doesn’t trivialize. It’s a pragmatic form of empathy that builds connection and user satisfaction. 📱👈🏻😍