We laugh, smile, frown, scrunch our faces in disgust, and nod / shake our heads on a daily basis. Having been embedded in to our evolutionary upbringing, these emotions are universally recognizable – to the point where we may often be able to interpret them just by listening to each other over the phone (ie. without face to face contact), or even across cultures and languages.

Obviously, first person contact is not the only way in which we communicate in this modern, technologically sophisticated age. Electronic correspondence has become so common and readily accessible; it is by far outpacing the quantity of direct contact we have with each other.

One obvious problem presents itself with this revolution however. How do we convey expressions, moods, feelings and emotions through written text, without woefully altering the context to the point of exhaustion on the readers’ part? The answer, as you might have already guessed, is Smiley Face Clip Art and Emoticons.

In their earliest form, “emoticons” were used to express emotions such as a smile or pout – by utilizing to common symbols on the keyboard – the “:” (colon), and the “)” or “(” (brackets) – grouped together. The resulting combination represented the eyes and mouth in relative positions of the accompanying emotions.

From here, a series of animated, colourful, lively pictures – the ones commonly utilized in modern messaging programs, were developed to take the place of these symbols. Given this rapid transition, new tools (like the smiley face toolbar) were created to facilitate the use of smiley face clip art and emoticons in our day to day instant messenger chats, emails, and social media interactions (like facebook and myspace). Currently, the smiley face toolbar has over 10,000 smileys for nearly every expression, emotion, and occasion you can think of!