Emotes used by billions of people to embellish YouTube comments.
Emotes are similar to emojis, just a little bit weirder! YouTube wanted to enable viewers to bring more personality to the Live Chat and comment section. We created YouTube’s first suite of emotes with artists around the globe. They are now used by over 2 billion people to add expression, energy, and humour to their comments.
My Role: Senior Art Director, Research, Strategy, Commissioning
Studio: Anyways Creative
Client: YouTube
YouTube hosts a myriad of content types – from gaming to cooking to sports – and each emote set was designed with a specific audience in mind. We worked with YouTube on the strategy behind each emote to make sure they resonated with particular communities and felt inclusive and representative of a wide range of people and emotions. Finding and collaborating with the right artists was important too, as the style as well as messaging needed to resonate with the audience.
Abelle Hayford, Gaming Emotes
Guy Field, Gaming Emotes
Yujin Won, Gaming Emotes
Misha X, Livestreaming Emotes
Serge Rodas, Genre-based Emotes
Gai Gai, Sports Emotes
With emotes, every pixel counts. In this case, we had a mere 24 x 24 to work with so they needed to remain legible while still full of personality. Where we could, we stripped back details and texture to make sure the specific emotion could shine through.
To celebrate Pride in 2023, we worked with YouTube again to create emotes for LGBTQIA+ communities across the world. Our design and art direction approach emphasized representation and celebration of differences among YouTube’s audience.
We had the incredible fortune to work with two artists to develop two Pride emote sets: Mia Saine and Wednesday Holmes. Both are queer-identifying artists with a history of work spotlighting underrepresented communities in their designs and celebrating social justice efforts through their art.
Mia Saine, Pride Emotes
Wednesday Holmes, Pride Emotes