Every Friday at our house is pizza-and-movie-night, so the decision to choose this movie was straightforward since it was fresh in my mind from our weekly tradition. To be honest, I also considered how visually engaging it would be. Given that it’s a children’s show, I knew there would be plenty of fun emojis and characters (such as lots of animals, as you can see). The week before this movie, my husband and I watched Dune 2, and summarizing that in a recognizable way would have been almost impossible. So yes, I guess I opted for something that I knew would be less of a challenge. 

In terms of my process, I started with the title because I could immediately envision which emojis would best represent it. However, the rest of the story wasn’t nearly as straightforward. Initially, I had much grander ambitions for the plot than what you see here. There was so much more I wanted to include, but with such a limited ability with which to say it, what remains is a very general and simplified version of the story, devoid of detail or mention of extra characters. I felt that including those would lead readers to tangents that would distract from the main points I wanted to get across.  

Reflecting on this process reminded me of our reading this week, where Bolter (2001) discusses how pictures lack narrative power. Because each picture element encompasses a broad range of verbal meanings, it’s hard to get specifics because each element can signify too much. To enhance clarity, I’ve structured the text chronologically using lines, knowing that everyone reading this will follow from left to right, top to bottom. 

I relied on a combination of words, ideas, and symbols for this activity. I don’t think I could have accomplished it without using all three elements, I basically utilized whatever resources I had at my disposal to get my point across. During the process, I experimented with different emojis to create something that was understandable, and I tested the activity out on my family a few times to gauge their understanding and gather feedback, which helped me refine it. 

Considering how often I use emojis, I thought this activity would be easier than it turned out to be. It made me realize how challenging it can be to convey information directly to the reader using visuals alone in a way that ensures they understand it clearly. This reflection prompted me to think about my own use of emojis. I typically use them not as a direct means of communication, but rather to reflect the tone or emotion behind what I’m saying. As Bolter (2001) suggests, visuals can serve to convey the emotional context of a message.  

I’ve observed a growing use of emojis in my workplace, not only among students but also among faculty, staff, and administration. I believe this trend arises from the challenge of effectively conveying tone through words alone, especially since much of our communication now happens via email and Teams chat. Visuals offer a universal and immediate way to add nuance or context to our written messages (Bolter, 2001). For example, everyone who sees :-0 instantly understands the sentiment I’m trying to convey (and there are days when I use that one quite frequently!). ;). 

Thanks. 

References:

Bolter, J. (2001). The breakout of the visual, Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (pp. 46-68) (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 

Click here to see what I was trying to get across in my emoji story:  Translation

Note: My daughter particularly enjoyed the activity and even took my computer to create a few of her own challenges to test both her father and me. She proved to be much better at it than I and I’ve added one of her creations below as a bonus task!