Get Info: #design

Media Darling: T-shirt design

by Matt Sephton — Mon, 19 May 2025 15:54:00 +0000

I was looking through Comptiq, Vol. 41, April 1988 and spotted an illustration showing the relative size of 2” floppy disks—used in some word processors at the time—compared to more common floppy disk sizes at the time: 8”, 5”, and 3.5”.

Which got me thinking about the ever decreasing size of storage and how it might make for a nice illustration on a T-shirt. So I created technical drawings of the following media in decreasing size:

5.25” floppy disk
3.5” floppy disk
MiniDisc
CompactFlash
SecureDigital
MicroSD

T-shirt

Various sizes and colours.

gingerbeardman.creator-spring.com/listing/media-darling

Stickers (To Scale)

Roughly to scale, on clear vinyl.

gingerbeardman.creator-spring.com/listing/media-darling-decal-floppy

gingerbeardman.creator-spring.com/listing/media-darling-decal-minidisc

Sticker (Not To Scale)

Not to scale, on clear vinyl

gingerbeardman.creator-spring.com/listing/media-darling-decal-colour

Alt Store

Some buyers may choose to buy from my alternate web store which ships from the UK.

www.tshirtstudio.com/marketplace/gingerbeardman

This store has more limited colour choices, though you can edit that during checkout. YMMV.

A haze of inspiration

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 28 Sep 2024 17:46:00 +0000

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I had to give an impromptu presentation about something I didn’t know much about. The goal of the task was to see how well we could ad-lib a presentation under pressure. Everybody in the room had to think of a topic whilst waiting for our turn. The person next to me couldn’t think of anything and asked me what I had thought of, I said “the off-side rule” (it’s a football/soccer thing, don’t worry about it). Then that person was called before me and proceeded to give a presentation about… the off-side rule. I was mortified, and when my turn came I was still so shell shocked that I can’t remember what other topic I picked was, or even how the rest of the day went. Afterwards I chatted with the person—at the time we were good friends and continue to be to this day—who told me when their name was called “a haze of inspiration” came over them and the only thing they could think about was the topic I’d just mentioned. And so it was.

From whence it came

Just as a haze obscures clear vision, the creative process can blur the lines between our own ideas and those we’ve encountered. We can be inspired by everything around us, in an unconscious way. I’d venture to say that this is the most common form of inspiration, you’re just existing and soaking up as much as you can. In some ways it is automatic and unavoidable. As a result, we share a lot of common experiences and so this sort of natural inspiration can lead to the Zeitgeist, with similar ideas emerging simultaneously in different places. A sort of opposite to this is the concept of incremental innovation, where small changes happen to existing ideas that are occasionally enough for it to feel new. And then there are the types of new ideas that can’t be easily found elsewhere, that are provably innovative and totally new. By definition the haze of inspiration is a very grey space, difficult to navigate, and open to interpretation. There’s no absolute right or wrong, unless you are in a position to flex legal muscles. Below is my own interpretation of how I see things, it’s expected that you won’t agree with all of it.

Navigating the haze

I often pause and examine my own creative process. This serves a number of purposes: it helps me notice opportunities for improvement that might otherwise be missed along the way. If my head is down, I might not notice that I can save time by refining my workflow, or gain new understanding by looking at a problem from a different angle or through a different lens.

Tracking or keeping a record of things you find inspiring is very useful. Some might use Pinterest, bookmark managers, scrap books, print outs, notebooks, folders of saved files. Whatever works for you, really.

At this point I feel it’s worth mentioning the challenge of distinguishing between inspiration and imitation. We can all be inspired by something, but how we choose to act on the inspiration can be a challenge. How much you take away from the inspiration might mean you cross the line into imitation. The difference between the two is open to interpretation, and legally it’s a very grey area, so it requires understanding of our own moral compass. More on that later. But for me the difference can be summarised by how comfortable I am in the knowledge that I put enough of myself into the idea, then I’m inspired. If I don’t put enough of myself into the idea, then I would call it imitation.

Original thinking

Thinking can be difficult, and coming up with original thoughts is even more difficult. One could ask if it’s even possible at all to have an original thought? I think it is, though it’s often said that “everything is a remix”. My personal feeling is that an original thoughts can only come when you take yourself out of the equation. Famous artists used drugs, alcohol, and more. Karl Wallinger of the band World Party (check out the album “Goodbye Jumbo”) famously “never worked straight” (~25:30), he would always smoke a joint with the idea being “to get yourself out the fucking way”. John Lennon, too, though perhaps with harder stuff.

On the other hand Quincy Jones used a technique where he would get himself into what he called “the alpha state”, a kind of liminal space between being asleep and awake, where he would routinely have all of his best ideas. Miles Davis used improvisation. Salvador Dalí used a technique he called “paranoiac-critical method” to access his subconscious through fear. David Lynch uses meditation. Brian Eno used a deck of cards called “Oblique Strategies” to add constraints to the creative process. David Bowie used a “cut-up technique” (also called découpé), adapted from one used by William S. Burroughs but with much older origins, where existing works were cut up and rearranged into new works. My current favourite pop star, Lo Lauren, creates songs in 10 minutes over a found beat using three suggested words to focus the topic of the lyrics. It’s encouraging to realise that there is more than one method and that you can most likely find one that works for you.

My own method is to recede into the haze itself, into darkness. The simple act of laying down in a quiet room, and closing my eyes for a few minutes is usually enough for me to navigate through the haze and come out with an original idea, solution to a problem, name of a new product, or whatever.

Research

For me, outside of the actual act of creation, this is most fun part of the creative endeavour. The world is literally your oyster. Given that 99% of stuff happened in the past, I prefer to consult historic sources. Old magazines, books, interviews, and of course the video games and music I grew up with are now old enough to qualify. Ha! The most important thing here is to look outside your field of view. It’s easy to be inspired by the things right in front of you, but more difficult—and more rewarding—to be inspired by things further afield. Reach deeper, go further, get outside your comfort zone, take the road less travelled.

Once inspired, or locked on to an idea, it’s important to do some due diligence to check that it’s unique, or not protected by any laws or copyright, or even just to check that a name is free enough to be used. Domain names can be taken, hashtags can be already used. My funniest example is when I was originally calling my hit game YOYOZO by another name: YOYOZORA, which is a combination of the words YOYO (the toy) and YOZORA (the Japanese word for night sky). I quickly changed plans when a hashtag search revealed somebody posting dick pics.

It’s worth noting that some creators intentionally avoid external influences during their creative process, believing this leads to more original work. Nick Cave, for instance, avoids listening to music while writing to prevent unconscious imitation. Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch tries not to watch other films, or even the scenes he has already shot, while working on a project to maintain his unique vision. Even in tech, Steve Jobs was known for his “not invented here” syndrome, often preferring to develop ideas from scratch. This approach isn’t about ignoring the world entirely, but about creating a space where your own ideas can flourish without immediate external influence. It’s a delicate balance – you want to be informed, but not overly swayed by what’s already out there.

Attribution

By now you’ll know in your heart if what you’re dealing with is imitation or inspiration. What next? Methods of attribution might include: direct credit, “inspired by”, footnotes, a mention, etc. Or if the inspiration is barely visible at all there might be no attribution needed. There’s that moral compass again.

Attribution can add value to your work, as it shows not only are you compassionate and considerate, but that you value the creativity of other people. In some fields, like music and visual arts it’s perhaps more difficult to do some forms of attribution. You can’t put a list of credits on a painting or in an audio recording, but you can put them in supporting material. There’s always a way.

I won’t spend much time on the topic of “AI”, or to be more precise “generative tools”, but it’s worth mentioning them briefly at this point as they lack any method of attribution which of course is a problem. How big a problem depends on how much originality is in the result and that is a very difficult thing to measure, though I would say not impossible at least regarding the series of prompts that led to the output. Anyway, the results from the use of such tools is also open to interpretation and perhaps this is even more of a grey area than the haze of inspiration itself.

Communication

So how do you figure out how best to attribute? By reaching out and having a conversation. But that’s easier said than done, I think.

I’ve never gone so far as to write a formal letter or anything like that, I’ve been more casual about it. I’ve written to game developers whose games I wanted to port. Having something for them to see is always good—a prototype—and explaining the expectations and reach of the agreement will make everybody feel comfortable. There will surely be some anxiety and reticence for an idea to be taken by somebody else. In my experience I try to frame it in as positive a way as possible. Answer the questions they might have before they even have a chance to think them.

Timing is always key. I always make such an approach as soon as possible. With my game Fore! Track, I contacted the developer whose game I was inspired by as soon as I had a prototype up and running. At that point, if they’d have objected to the idea I wouldn’t have lost much time. If I’d have contacted them with a finished game, it might not have made much difference to their decision making process, but I would have had more invested in it and more to lose. Contacting somebody with only an idea for me feels like the wrong way to go about it, as ideas are relatively easy and execution is everything.

With such discussions it’s important to have open conversations, which will can lead to mutual understanding and respect. Leave your ego at the door and bring truthfulness, compassion, open-mindedness and you will be rewarded. Misunderstandings will inevitably happen through the course of the conversation, but by being open both parties can rest assured that there will only be movement towards resolution rather than escalation.

By far the best outcome of such open discussions is the fact that two heads are better than one so the solution is almost always better than the original idea or approach. This means it’s in your own interests to have these sorts of conversations as often as possible. They might lead to better ideas, collaboration, partnerships, refinement, suggestions you would never have thought of, about turns, and of course rejection.

Rejections are always hard to take, but I’m a firm believer that with time, and enough water under the bridge, that newer and stronger ideas will emerge. For me that can take weeks, months, even years. But every time it happens I think “the Universe provides” and smile.

Ethical considerations

So, about that moral compass I keep mentioning. Ideas are more than a feeling, especially when executed and turned into something that can be seen, heard, played. They turn from intangible to tangible, and this process is guided by your moral compass.

When it comes to that “haze of inspiration”, intellectual integrity is the needle on your moral compass. It helps you navigate through the fog without stepping on anyone’s toes. It’s about asking yourself not whether you could use an idea, but whether you should. It’s about being upfront about what inspired you, maybe asking for a thumbs-up if you’re borrowing heavily from someone else’s work, and generally just being a decent human in the creative playground. By sticking to these principles, you’re not just keeping your own nose clean. You’re helping to create an environment where ideas can bounce around freely, where people aren’t afraid to share their cool thoughts, and where everyone gets their due credit. It’s like keeping the idea ecosystem healthy, you know?

Intellectual integrity is really just about not being a jerk with other people’s ideas. It’s about giving credit where it’s due, trying to get your facts straight, and not twisting things to fit your narrative. It’s also about owning your work, warts and all. If you messed up or your info isn’t 100% solid, just say so. Nobody’s perfect, right? And here’s an important addition: be open to other viewpoints. Just because someone disagrees with you doesn’t mean they’re wrong (even if you really, really think they are).

All ideas build on previous work. I subscribe to the idea that everything is a remix, and I also know that being cool, kind, and considerate costs nothing. Being uncool, unkind, or inconsiderate can cost you more energy in the long run. Time teaches that particular lesson, so consider it being mentioned here a free power-up. We are lucky enough to be able to stand on the shoulders of giants, so it’s important to not make a mess whilst we’re up there.

Personal growth

Growing is hard and with it come a lot of pains. Road blocks, wrong turns, bad luck, but hopefully it will trend towards progress.

One key aspect of growth is synthesis. Plants turn light energy into chemical energy through photosynthesis. The output is vastly different to the input. I think this is a useful lens through which to look at techniques for turning influences into something truly novel. You can look at the The Great Wave and print your own version of it if the goal is to imitate it as closely as possible (as David Bull has done), or you might choose to draw it instead and replace the crests of the wave with bunny rabbits (as kozyndan did), or you might sculpt it from digital clay and add some mahjong tiles to it (like vxcl did for my game Sparrow Solitaire).

I like to think of this synthesis as a road—you can turn off at any point but the further you go the more wonderful the sights will be. I’d like to make a short detour to mention constraints and how they can foster creativity. Whilst the road might be long, it’s not sprawling but a single direction. Navigating a complex road system would be much more difficult, so I encourage you to impose additional constraints if there don’t seem to be enough, or if the way forward isn’t clear.

Any period of not creating that you end up in is just as important as a period of intense creativity that you might rather be in. My favourite quote about this (by BT, the musician; I’m paraphrasing) is that creativity comes in waves, sometimes you’re in the doldrums and not much is happening but there is no doubt that the next wave will arrive at some point, so you just have to be ready to jump on and ride it when it does!

It’s a fine balance between being influenced and being derivative. Sadly your moral compass is not fitted with a warning alarm of any sort, so you’ll have to rely on your heart, head, and those of others to give you guidance here. Having respect for others’ ideas can be considered a constraint in and of itself and can actually push you to be more innovative. Being derivative is a trap to be avoided, not only would you not gain as much personally from the endeavour but you might also inadvertently dilute the idea, brand, vibe of the originator. You should instead consider the person who has inspired you as a mentor, supporter, team mate, power-up, voice of reason, or even shoulder to cry on. The important take-away is that they are there to help because, hey, they were there first.

Embracing the future

With enough searching, or metaphorical travelling, you’ll be able to find your own voice, style, brand, or “vibe” as I prefer to call it. I’m a bit of a hippie at heart. The ultimate goal is to find that rug that really ties the room together. Then cherish it, feed it, sculpt it, even defend it if the need arises. You’ll have the ideas, make a dent in the universe, and develop a vibe that other people will be influenced by, and hopefully they will take the right path and be inspired by it rather than choose to imitate it. Perhaps that’s the ultimate goal? It’s your turn to set a good example for those that come after you.

Excerpt from The Big Lebowski (Ethan & Joel Coen, 1998)

Moai-chan-dise

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 19:19:00 +0000

Let’s celebrate!

we just hit 1000 games at my database of moai in video games 🗿
today is Fiestas Patrias (Independence Day) in Chile 🇨🇱

So here’s some “Moai-chan-dise” ✨

t-shirts and stickers in both silly and serious styles
special “relaxing” sticker by @Vxcl

T-shirts

Various sizes and colours.

Stickers

3-inch longest side, on clear vinyl.

Special Edition Sticker

3-inch longest side, on clear vinyl.

gingerbeardman.creator-spring.com/listing/moai-relaxing-sticker

Alt Store

Some buyers may choose to buy from my alternate web store which ships from the UK.

www.tshirtstudio.com/marketplace/gingerbeardman

This store has more limited colour choices, though you can edit that during checkout. YMMV.

This behavior is by design

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 28 Aug 2024 21:46:00 +0000

Back in the mid-1990s I was using Windows 95/98 and running up against bugs, problems, driver issues, unexpected things happening. I would often end up on the Microsoft Knowledge Base support web pages, where the issue would often be accompanied by the line “This behavior is by design”, which remains in use to this very day.

This mantra has stuck with me over the years, and it came to light in a recent discussion about the design of Lucas Pope’s Mars After Midnight for the Playdate handheld game console. It has a black interstitial screen between some scenes, which was enough to get me thinking about the intent behind the design of a screen that contains …nothing at all.

To be or not to be

I’m as guilty as anybody in wondering why certain things are how they are in the software, apps, or games I’m using. It’s a fundamental truth about software development that often goes unnoticed by end users: every aspect of computer software is the result of deliberate human decisions, from the broadest feature sets right down to the placement of individual pixels.

This intentionality in software design has profound implications. It means that the user experience—whether frustrating or delightful—stems from choices made by developers, designers, product managers, and perhaps even the users themselves. How enjoyable or not the software is to use, the accessibility (or lack thereof) of user interfaces, and even the bugs and glitches we encounter are all products of the human decision-making process. This perspective challenges the notion that technology is impersonal, as there are human minds and motivations behind every aspect.

However, it’s worth noting that while every element is designed, not all design decisions are made with equal deliberation or foresight. Some choices are carefully considered and tested, while others might be rushed, overlooked, or based on flawed assumptions. Additionally, the complexity of modern software means that interactions between different design choices can sometimes lead to unintended consequences. More on that later.

Examples

Given that we could go on forever with examples, here are 10 off the top of my head:

whether or not there’s a black screen between scenes in a game
size of padding or border around the edge of a dialog box
radius of a rounded rectangle
spacing or kerning between specific letters of a font
aliasing or anti-aliasing around the edge of a circle
speed at which an object moves across the screen
what happens when you press a button or do an action
wording on a menu item or dialog box
order of two competing buttons that mean cancel or proceed
the number of digits used to represent a high score

Making a game involves deciding on thousands upon thousands of tiny things like this. I love it.

Happy accidents

While most aspects of software are meticulously planned, sometimes unintended behaviors or glitches lead to serendipitous discoveries. These “happy accidents” might result in a breakthrough in design and can become beloved features if developers choose to keep them.

A famous example is the “creeper” in Minecraft, which resulted from a coding error while creating pigs. The game’s creator, Markus Persson, liked the mistaken entity so much that he decided to keep and refine it, turning it into one of the game’s most iconic elements. Similarly, the wavedash technique in Super Smash Bros. Melee was an unintended consequence of the game’s physics engine, but it became a crucial part of high-level play after creator Masahiro Sakurai opted to leave it in. These instances remind us that even in a world of intentional design, there’s room for the unexpected—and the human decision to embrace and incorporate these accidents can lead to some of the most innovative and engaging aspects of software.

Deciding by not deciding

Some might argue that you don’t make a choice when you accept the default settings, like the white background and font in a Word document. Or you might make the same argument about using an existing framework, package, template, or SDK in your software. However, I would argue that by using the defaults you are implicitly agreeing with the designers’ choices. As a user you become complicit in the design decisions simply by not changing them.

This tacit agreement with default settings is another aspect of design that often goes unnoticed, yet it plays a significant role in shaping the end product. Somebody at Microsoft decided that with Office 2007 the default font would become Calibri, replacing Times New Roman which had been the default since forever. There’s no better example of the implications and reach of a single human decision.

Thinking about the future

At the end of the day, computers do only what we direct them to do, so every aspect of software has been touched by the hand of a human. With the rise of machine learning and “AI” coding assistants, that human touch may become increasingly abstracted from view. However, rest assured it is still there. Even in systems that utilize artificial intelligence, humans are designing the algorithms, curating and creating the training data, and making decisions about how to implement and apply these tools. The fundamental truth remains: behind every line of code, every pixel, and every feature, there are human decisions shaping our experiences.

Emigre typography and graphic design magazine (1984–2005)

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 24 May 2024 20:19:00 +0000

Emigre magazine was a highly influential graphic design publication. It was known for its innovative and experimental approach to typography and graphic design, pushing the boundaries of traditional design norms—for better or worse. The magazine was published from 1984 (year of the Macintosh launch) until 2005, and during its run it played a critical role in shaping the discourse around digital design and typography. It was founded by Rudy VanderLans and his wife Zuzana Licko.

Tell me about it

Emigre is notable for many reasons, and if you’re interested in 80s and 90s design there will surely be something in there for you. I first heard about Emigre when I started work at London graphic design agency Form in 1998, so about three quarters through the run.

Some features that stand out for me personally are:

Early bitmap fonts (1984) and emoji-like pictograms (1986) created by Zuzana Licko
Early 1-bit Macintosh art by John Hersey (1985) and many other lovely period details
Designs by such luminaries as Neville Brody, Erik Spiekermann, and many more
Articles on people like font designer Aldo Novarese
Issues dedicated to the record label 4AD (1988) and The Designers Republic (1994)

Online archives

I recently wanted to read some of the issues again and found a couple of online archives:

Letterform Archive: Emigre Collection (browsable magazines, simplified cross references)
University of Minnesota: Emigre Magazine Index (only comprehensive cross references)

Digital versions

If you want to take the magazine with you today it’s available in the Emigre Fonts app for iPad/iPhone, which allows you to download the issues for offline reading.

If you can’t use, or would rather not use, the official app I’ve converted the issues to CBZ files. Read those with Panels, Simple Comic, CDisplayEx, or another comic reader app of your choice.

Emigre (magazine) at Wikipedia
Emigre entry at Type Design Information Page
Type ‘90 HyperCard Video video of a HyperCard Stack
Designing the Emigre Magazine Index, Jessica Barness, 2016
Merz to Emigre and Beyond Avant-Garde Magazine Design of the Twentieth Century
Verbum “The Journal of Personal Computer-Aesthetics”, Michael Gosney, 1986–

Emoji history: the missing years

by Matt Sephton — Fri, 10 May 2024 20:00:00 +0000

During my research into vintage Japanese drawing software, I came across some devices that had built in sketch or handwritten memo functions. I bought a couple of them to see if they did anything cool or interesting. These sorts of devices are pre-internet, so there’s not much about them online, and they can’t be emulated, so the only way to find out what they do is to get first hand experience by reading the manual or, better, using one yourself. It’s difficult to find these devices in working condition, as most of them have screen polarisers that have gone bad over time, but if you’re lucky you can find one.

1994

One such device I bought was the Sharp PI-4000, from 1994. This is a pocket computer that rolled out of Sharp’s involvement in the development and manufacturing of Apple’s Newton MessagePad. In 1993 Sharp did their own licenced version of the Apple Newton MessagePad H1000, the Expert Pad PI-7000, but just like Apple’s device it wasn’t as successful as they’d hoped. But before that, in 1992, they’d made a device called the PV-F1 which was the first touchscreen-only PDA. After the Expert Pad failure, Sharp took another attempt at the concept and came up with the PI-3000 in 1993. This solved all the problems with the PV-F1, most notably size and cost. The device I have, the PI-4000, was released a year later and features higher memory capacity. The PI-3000/4000 devices could transfer data via infrared, connect to a modem to send faxes, and by the PI-5000 in 1995 could connect to cell phones to send emails. They all use a simplified—but still quite complicated—version of the multi-window operating system that had been developed for the PV-F1.

So I was trying out the PI-4000, the memo function is pretty cool allowing you to draw in different dither shades and pen widths, and use stamps to add symbols to your memo. These are mostly map-related things like road and rail junctions, buildings, and train stations. Pretty cool. Then I tried typing some messages on the device and as I explored the myriad of keyboard input mechanisms I came across something rather familiar (sorry about the awful photo—it’s the best I could do, honest—the screen is very reflective and the pixels are so far from the backing they cast individual shadows!):

At this point, I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing because I was under the impression that the first emoji were created by an anonymous designer at SoftBank in 1997, and the most famous emoji were created by Shigetaka Kurita at NTT DoCoMo in 1999. But the Sharp PI-4000 in my hands was released in 1994, and it was chock full of recognisable emoji. Then down the rabbit hole I fell. 🕳️🐇

1990

A little more reading, and a tip from my friend @chamekan on Twitter, unearthed the fact that the NEC PI-ET1 in 1990 also contained emoji¹. I also found a collector who owned a device, and we’ll hear more from them later on. The device is literally the coolest thing you’ve ever seen. With system software written by video game developer Hudson Soft its character set features emoji that can be typed inline, and it also features a “montage function” that allows you to create faces for each of your contacts—15 years later we’d see something similar in Mii on Nintendo Wii in 2006. The emoji on this device are a lot less well designed, in my humble opinion, than those on the Sharp devices.

A word about word processors

By now I was in contact with Keith at Emojipedia, who mentioned that he remembered a Sharp device with emoji, a word processor. I found one in the Sharp WD-A521, from November 1990, which featured higher resolution versions of the emoji designs found on my Sharp PI-4000.

There’s also the Panasonic FW-U1S50 from 1990, which contains 110 famiiar emoji under a section called “illustrations”, and also contains another 99 “audio/visual” symbols some of which coincide with modern emoji.

Perhaps there are other word processors from around that time that also contain emoji? I understand from my friend Izumi Okano that Japanese software developer Enzan-Hoshigumi, most famous for their Macintosh software and clipart, had created pictograms for one of the Canoword word processors around 1986. So at this point I’m thinking, why would the emoji on a word processor be ignored on the timeline of emoji history? Was there anything else being ignored?

Before cell phones became prevalent there were pagers, or beepers, in Japan these were known as Pocket Bell. Initially they would only beep and show a number, and people would use “beeper slang” to form words by using numbers whose pronunciation was similar to words and syllables. Necessity is the mother of invention! Eventually pagers would be able to send and receive text. It was perhaps only natural that emoji find a home on these devices, with the most notable being the heart ❤️ emoji. But the date of this transition is 1995, which is earlier than the SoftBank emoji from 1997 but later than my Sharp PI-4000 device.

A note about beepers

As an aside, it’s interesting to understand how emoji were typed on pagers/beepers. They weren’t selected using a picker, which would have required cycling through a huge range of characters, but rather typed in numeric digits which narrows the cycling down to far less characters.

The numeric code: 21 91 15 24 12 23 78
…would map to: カラオケイク？
…which means: KARAOKE?

Wild. Typing text this way must have felt like programming machine code directly in hexadecimal!

What makes it emoji?

I was chatting to a fellow designer, who has designed many emoji in his career, discussing the earlier emoji I had found in my 1994 device. They asked me to confirm that I could type emoji inline with text, giving me the example W😲W, which was his criteria for the symbols to qualify as emoji. If I couldn’t do that, he suggested we could only consider the symbols as icons.

So if I can type them inline amongst text on my device from 1994 that was capable of connecting to other devices and sending messages, then surely they should be considered the first emoji? Why do we, currently, only count emoji as emoji if they’re on a mobile phone? I’m also wondering when these emoji might have been designed. Were they created in 1994 for the PI-4000, in 1993 for the PI-3000, or earlier for another device?

1988

So I kept looking. I was aware of another line of Sharp devices, electronic organisers, known as the Bware range in Japan and Wizard in the USA. These were pretty popular at the time, so much so that the USA device even got it’s own episode of Seinfeld in 1998. I’d come back into contact with these devices just last year as they had the interesting capability of being able to play video games stored on solid-state application “IC” cards. You can play a version of Tetris by BPS that is quite different to the Game Boy version, and both were released in 1989. You can also play versions of Sokoban by Thinking Rabbit, and Fortress by SSI/Victor, amongst others.

Thanks to a collector, Akuji, I was able to confirm that the Japanese PA-8500 device, released in 1988, contains emoji² similar in design to those found on my PI-4000 and on the WD-A521. When redrawing these it was obvious that all the Sharp emoji sets are based on the same master design. (I’d love to know more about the Sharp artwork if anybody knows anything.)

And if you need to see the word 絵文字 (emoji) next to these symbols to be satisfied, then look no further than this table column header in the manual of 1988’s Toshiba Rupo JW95F word processor.

How old is an emoji?

At this point we’ve wiped almost a decade off the creation date of emoji, but can we go further? Is there a way to date a set of emoji? In Japanese 絵文字 means emoji — and it turns out that word has its own surprisingly long history, which I’ll come back to at the end of this post.

If we think about the PA line of devices, the PA-8500 was released in 1988, and it’s predecessor the (emoji-less) PA-7000 was released in 1987. So maybe the emoji set was created around this time? We can get closer by looking at a couple of characters present in the emoji that give us a clue to the date of creation. That is indeed the case with the Sharp PI-4000 and WD-A521.

The characters ○金 and ○ビ (maru-kin meaning rich/successful/winner and maru-bi meaning poor/unsuccessful/loser) were invented by the author Kazuhiro Watanabe in 1984 in his book Kinkonkan which was later made into a movie. These were quickly accepted into Japanese vocabulary, winning the 84年の日本流行語 (Japanese Buzzwords Award 1984). And they are right there in the Sharp PI-4000 emoji, represented as characters enclosed in circles. They were in common use throughout Japan’s bubble-era, 1986-1991, but eventually fell out of fashion and are now considered obsolete. It’s interesting to note that they are not featured in either the 1997 SoftBank or 1999 NTT DoCoMo emoji sets.

1986

Around the same time, the day after I published this post, I did a Twitter search and found an image of the November 1987 issue of ラジオの製作 (“Radio Production”) magazine, which featured a full page on a Sanyo SANWORD personal word processor and its emoji table. That sent me hunting for Sanyo manuals.

The earliest I tracked down was the Sanyo SWP-M21 “Sanword mini S”, a budget personal word processor from 1986. It has the usual cast — smiley face, snowman, fleur-de-lis, pointing finger, weather symbols, faces, hand gestures — but the genuinely fun bit is its 外字 editor. Sanyo let users design up to 94 of their own 24×24 dot characters and save them out to floppy. Build-your-own-emoji on a 1986 home appliance. 🎨

The manual shows off the kinds of things you could make: a cat, a turtle, a mushroom, an elephant, a ship, a hand making a peace sign, a heart with an arrow through it, an orca. The accompanying copy brags 「とてもワープロとは思えないような、ユニークな印刷を楽しむことができます」 — “you can enjoy unique printing you’d hardly think a word processor could do.”

Somewhere out there, there were Japanese homes in the late 80s with floppy disks full of personal pictographic vocabulary — family crests, drawings of pets, in-joke symbols between friends. Almost all of those floppies are presumably long gone now. If anyone has one in a drawer, I’d love to see it. 💾

1984

Once you accept that emoji existed in the 1980s, more things come to light. The Ishii Award 「石井賞創作タイプフェイスコンテスト」 was a typeface design contest organised by the community of type designers in 1970. By 1984 it was in its 8th year. Yutaka Satoh of Type-Labo proposed a typeface consisting of emoji. Because they weren’t on screen they were created by arranging dots in various shapes, but they are recognisably emoji.

Coincidentally, I used a hybrid of this sort of approach when I added emoji to my game YOYOZO in September 2023: I plot the emoji as points but define them on a pixel grid.

In Matt Alt’s book “The Secret Lives of Emoji: How Emoticons Conquered the World”, there is a brief mention of ASCII emoticons on the Japanese internet (JUNET) in 1984, and then it fast forwards to 1995 to begin talking about the Pager, missing a decade of emoji usage in the process.

In the Yakumono typeface, created by Yutaka Satoh (TYPE-LABO), we can clearly see many of the key emoji that would persist throughout the years: smiley faces, food, drink, cigarettes, sweat, umbrella, paperclip, lips, envelope, and most interestingly the (not smiling) pile of poo. This typeface received an honourable mention at the awards. Some 40 years later, I think it’s safe to say it deserved more. 🏆

1979

We can see emoji in the character sets of Japanese home computers such as the Sharp MZ-80K, which included a UFO, smiley faces, stick figures, car, snake, and more. I won’t include them here but you can click the above link to see some in a PDF. 💾

1965

“Full Moon With Face”, also known as BA-90 which was listed in a book of typesetting symbols, published by Sha-ken in 1965. A smiling moon is still present in the emoji set today. 🌝

1959

CO-59 is a character set created in 1959 for exchange of data between Japanese newspapers. In it is included a symbol of a baseball, which again is still present in emoji ⚾️ and at Unicode codepoint U+26BE ⚾︎ today.

Comparing Emoji

I was interested in how the emoji that I have redrawn compared to the 1997 SoftBank and 1999 DoCoMo sets, and an early Pocket Bell, so here’s a little table.

	Sharp PA-8500	NEC PI-ET1	Sharp PI-4000	Pocket Bell R-FAHC	SoftBank	NTT DoCoMo
Year	1988	1990	1994	1995	1997	1999
Quantity (approx)	100	130	170	7	90	176
Resolution	16×16	16×16	12×12	5×7	12×12	12×12

A word about the word

A side discovery: the word 絵文字 (emoji) itself has a much longer paper trail. The earliest citation I’ve found is Kenkyūsha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary, 1954—the standard postwar bilingual reference. It defines:

A settled dictionary headword forty-five years before DoCoMo. “Pictorial symbol” is the second listed sense — more central, by lexicographers’ ordering convention, than “hieroglyphics.”

The word kept showing up in places I wasn’t expecting:

1975: A Sony catalogue describes its ETV-4010 school AV mixing console as having 「パネル面の絵文字、色分け表示」 — “emoji on the panel face, colour-coded indicators”. The 絵文字 are the small pictographic labels on the control panel. Same functional concept as digital emoji, applied to industrial hardware, twenty-four years before i-mode.
1984: The graphic designer Kuwayama Yasaburō publishes a 431-page reference book titled simply 『世界の絵文字』 (Sekai no Emoji / “Emoji of the World”) on global logos, pictograms, and trademark design, spanning the years 1970–1983.
1984: ASCII magazine reviews the Canon PW-10 word processor in its August news section, noting that “各種記号、絵文字をワンタッチで表示することができる” — “various symbols and emoji can be displayed at the touch of a button”. Here are some great photos thanks to Marcin Wichary.
1985: MSX Magazine’s MSX 豆辞典 pocket dictionary supplement, distributed via Japan National Railways station kiosks, uses 絵文字 as the umbrella term in its entry for アイコン (icon), and gently complains that American influence has wrongly promoted “icon” into the same umbrella role.
1988: Toshiba’s Rupo JW95F word processor manual uses 絵文字 as a column header in its emoji-input reference table, no gloss whatsoever — the most casual possible use of a technical term.
1993: Nojima Hisao publishes “絵文字の心理的効果” (“Psychological Effects of Emoji”) in the intellectual monthly 現代のエスプリ. By January 1994 it was being cited internationally in the Pacific Telecommunications Council conference proceedings in Honolulu.

What DoCoMo’s 1999 set did was become the international reference point — which is why English borrowed 絵文字 as “emoji” rather than Sharp’s or Toshiba’s or Sanyo’s much earlier sets. The word’s invention is fiction. Its globalisation via DoCoMo is real, but only in English. 🌍

Conclusion

So what does this all mean? I’d say mostly that the history emoji isn’t as clean cut as you might have thought. You can decide for yourself on what you consider to be the first emoji. It depends on our own personal definition, so there is no right or wrong answer. 😎

Personally, I define the start date of emoji as the point in time when sets of these symbols first appeared for use whilst composing text. I don’t think the timeline should start at mobile phones, as this feels like a somewhat arbitrary decision that dismisses a lot of history. It’s like saying music only began to exist from the moment it could be recorded and listened to without the actual muscians being present. 🤔

As to whether the timeline of emoji history will be rewritten with this knowledge, it’s difficult to say. Much of this falls in the grey area of happening around the time the internet was taking hold, plus most things about the origin of emoji are in Japanese language, so there are unlikely to be sources Wikipedia would consider verifiable enough. The best we could do is quote the pages of the manuals for devices, and for the rest hope that there’s some record in Japanese literature that could be cited.

I won’t be running the Wikipedia editing gauntlet, but if you do please let me know how it goes! 🧨

Terms of use

I painstakingly recreated the emoji sets on this page, pixel by pixel, over many days of hard work. I even went so far as adding a new tool to the pixel art app I use, so as to make the task of redrawing hundreds of emoji a little less daunting. Feel free to utilize the emoji images, just remember to credit @gingerbeardman and include a link to this page. With one exception: I object to the use of these images for the purpose of creating NFTs. Thanks for your understanding!

Printed citations

NEC Electronic Tool PI-ET1, Instruction Manual, p.131, システム外字数 (“Non System Kanji”) ↩
Sharp Electronic Notebook PA-8500, Operating Instructions, p.201, 記号一覧表 (“Symbol List”) ↩

My “Bubble Era” T-shirt Store

by Matt Sephton — Sat, 28 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I’m relaunching my “bubble era” T-shirt store on @teespring with international shipping in time for Christmas! teespring.com/stores/gingerbeardman

Retro games, computers, scooters and other cool logos on your favourite colour T-shirts!

These T-shirts have been a side-project of mine for many years—I redraw old logos as vector art, just for kicks! The oldest designs—CHOP and SPRINT—date back over 15 years to the time when I realised how easy it was to get T-shirts printed

Every so often I pick a design out of my folder of ideas and draw it up as vectors. I find the process of redrawing shapes with “good paths” quite relaxing and therapeutic, kind of like an open-ended puzzle game. (glyphsapp.com/learn/drawing-…)

Hachisuke (ハチ助 in Japan; Hu-bee in USA) was the mascot of HUDSON SOFT. Apparently a mixture of bee and mouse or cat! Sometimes referred to as “a fanciful depiction of a bee”. After seeing this vintage T-shirt I set about redrawing it using old photo ref

The main outlines of Hachisuke were easy enough to draw, but the halftone dots on the hat took some thinking. Eventually I achieved the effect using a series of dotted lines. And I found a bug in @affinitybyserif Designer whilst doing it! (teespring.com/stores/gingerb…)

One of my other favourite logos is for an old game called BILLIARDS which features a balloon style typeface. At this time magazine layout and graphic design was likely to have been done using phototypesetting rather than using computer. (teespring.com/stores/gingerb…)

DENGEKI G’s ENGINE magazine evolved from covering just the PC-Engine and games by NEC, to a broader range of games. The G in the title refers to Gals and Games which means there is often a broad range of content in the magazine, if you get what I mean. 🍑 (teespring.com/stores/gingerb…)

HIPPON SUPER! magazine was known for having a different tone than its main competitors, such as (Weekly) Famitsu and GAMEST. It had a whole bunch of logos over its lifetime, but I think the first one is by far the best. (teespring.com/stores/gingerb…)

As much as I enjoy figuring out the best paths to represent a shape that was probably originally drawn/cut by hand, I’m happy to take some short cuts at times. Here on MSX・FAN I use two rectangles to cut into neighbouring shapes when I should have just used thick strokes

The “Oh!” series of home cpmouter magazines are some of my favourites, and each of them (there are dozens!) had wonderful logos. I redrew a handful of them in black and white so they work on dark or light coloured T-shirts. (teespring.com/stores/gingerb…)

Oh! MZ is probably my favourite of the bunch, featuring amazing cover art including Syd Mead’s Blade Runner concept art for no reason other than it looked cool.

The Sharp MZ-series of computers couldn’t do bitmap graphics so everything had to be done using the character set, which lead to this genius set of Hanafuda cards:

Oh! HIT BIT is a magazine specific to Sony’s line of MSX computers and was a real joy to redraw as it’s geometric nature allowed me to use a grid! I LOVE GRIDS. (teespring.com/stores/gingerb…)

Speaking of grids, there’s a cool app for macOS called KARO GRAPH which is a “graph paper” vector drawing tool with always-on grid and snapping to encourage structured drawing. I really dig it; you might too: (apps.apple.com/gb/app/karo-gr…)

This next logo, for PASOCON SUNDAY, was spotted in a YouTube video of an old PC-focussed TV show. After spotting it there I managed to find higher resolution versions of it in Japanese magazines from the same era: (youtu.be/Bwpsbg6j0DI?t=…)

I should mention the custom type old Japanese video game magazines used to headline articles about various games. SO COOL. (teespring.com/stores/gingerb…)

Articles often contained custom illustrations. I chose to take them out of their original context and surroundings and place them as large as possible on the front of a T-shirt. (teespring.com/stores/gingerb…)

Another love of mine are “bubble era” Japanese vehicles, from crazy vans with skylite roofs to cute scooters. All of which seem to have the coolest names. (teespring.com/stores/gingerb…)

If you’re into those check out my collection of old Honda scooter brochures: (flickr.com/photos/emsef/s…)

Moving from Japan to USA @scottekim has kindly given me permission to reproduce some T-shirts he designed in the 80s for CGDC (Computer Games Developer Conference, which became GDC after they realised games are also on consoles) and HACKERS’ CONFERENCE (as worn by @AndyHertzfeld)

Back in the UK 80s music TV series “The Tube” had a logo that was actually a neon tube light. Drawing this was similar to the previous BILLIARDS logo, but its more freeform nature actually made it more difficult! (teespring.com/stores/gingerb…)

UNITS “digital stimulation” is the album cover for the 1980 release but I added to the bottom of the design to make it look better on a T-shirt. The original artwork was created with strips of translucent plastic and the print on the T has the same effect! (discogs.com/Units-Digital-…)

Verbum “The Journal of Personal Computer-Aesthetics”

by Matt Sephton — Wed, 10 Jul 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Verbum “The Journal of Personal Computer-Aesthetics” (1986–1991) was an early computer lifestyle magazine focusing on interactive art and computer graphics.

All issues (well, except issue 4.3): archive.org/details/verbummagazine?&sort=date
Table of contents for all issues: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verbum_(magazine)
Podcast interview with its creator Michael Gosney: www.drfutureshow.com/drfutureblog/interview-media-pioneer-michael-gosney-on-the-renaissance-of.html

Sensible Soccer T-shirt

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 23 May 2002 11:00:00 +0000

I won a competition in a magazine that resulted in my design for a Sensible Soccer T-shirt being put into production by a company called Joystick Junkies.

By early 2004 they were available to buy at online from the BSI Merch website and Amazon UK, as well as on the UK high street at all River Island stores, and to buy wholesale from Big Ben Interactive.

T-shirts were spotted in the wild as far afield as Canada and Australia!

Design

It’s a shame they didn’t have the budget to do the lines along the shoulders and around the neck!

Eagle-eyed pixel-peeping viewers will notice that the final design isn’t actual Sensible Soccer sprites.

Web Design Index 2

by Matt Sephton — Thu, 31 Jan 2002 12:00:00 +0000

A couple of websites I’ve built: one for photographer Rankin and the other for my former employer Form, made during my time working for them in 1998/9, are featured in the book Web Design Index 2 and on the accompanying CD.

Compiled by Günter Beer, and published by The Pepin Press/Agile Rabbit Editions.

Cease & Desist: The Designers Republic

by Matt Sephton — Tue, 17 Jun 1997 00:00:00 +0000

A letter I received from The Designers Republic after creating a font inspired by their work. They chose to order a cease and desist, rather than fostering creativity.

Matt Sephton created an original font called Block Out–a techno font that can still be found here. He had used Fontographer. It was, as he put it, influenced by the tDR font in the Wipeout series of games. He placed a free truetype font on his web site, but was confronted with a threatening letter from tDR and was forced to take down the free .ttf font from his site. They claimed their font 6x6 (even though Matt’s is based on a 7x7 grid) was what he was trying to sell. Another instance of corporate bullying. —Luc Devroye, from luc.devroye.org/fonts-72415.html

My font was drawn completely from scratch using Fontographer 4.1, so I find it perplexing that glyphs I had created straight from my own imagination were the same as those in the apparently identical font. I offered my font as a free download on my website, under the concept of Shareware which encouraged others to also share the font for free, and if anybody felt like sending a donation they could do. As you might expect, this is a bit of a hippy thing to do and nobody ever donated anything! And I never did hear from the Head of the Department of Computer Science.

An archived copy of the font can be found on this CD-ROM from 2007.

Get Info: #design

Media Darling: T-shirt design

T-shirt

Stickers (To Scale)

Sticker (Not To Scale)

Alt Store

A haze of inspiration

From whence it came

Navigating the haze

Original thinking

Research

Attribution

Communication

Ethical considerations

Personal growth

Embracing the future

Further reading

Moai-chan-dise

T-shirts

Stickers

Special Edition Sticker

Alt Store

This behavior is by design

To be or not to be

Examples

Happy accidents

Deciding by not deciding

Thinking about the future

Emigre typography and graphic design magazine (1984–2005)

Tell me about it

Online archives

Digital versions

Related reading

Emoji history: the missing years

1994

1990

A word about word processors

A note about beepers

What makes it emoji?

1988

How old is an emoji?

1986

1984

1979

1965

1959

Comparing Emoji

A word about the word

Conclusion

Terms of use

Printed citations

My “Bubble Era” T-shirt Store

Verbum “The Journal of Personal Computer-Aesthetics”

Sensible Soccer T-shirt

Design

Web Design Index 2

Links

Cease & Desist: The Designers Republic