Throwback

Now let’s take a walk down memory lane. Remember when MSN Messenger (Windows Live Messenger) and Microsoft WordArt was still a thing?  The ability to send emoticons and animated text gifs was truly groundbreaking and revolutionary back then.  

Rewinding to MSN Messenger, which was a form of communication also known as instant messaging that was popular.

The favoured trend of typography on this service was making the text unreadable. Users replaced words with emoticons just to make the conversation more fun and quirky, that was simply the trend back then. Not to forget to mention, more comic sans. 

In the above image explains the different abbreviations used in the
instant messaging chants and of course the chosen typeface
 was none other than the iconic Comic Sans
.
The moving images above are animated text gifs that were used in MSN.

Another service offered my Microsoft is WordArt, which is a text-styling utility. 

WordArt is still available in Microsoft Office products.  WordArt allowed users to be creative and design how they would like their text to appear, whether that may be adding a fill, outline, shadow, effects, gradients, warp, and much more.  WordArt was and still is essential to school assignments to add pizzaz to a slideshow presentation or even a word document.  If you ask me, WordArt was simply the peak of graphic design at its finest in the late 1990′s and early 2000′s.

  

Looking at these two services may only bring back nostalgia, however it reminds us of how much we have improved since then.  Although the mentioned services of MSN and Microsoft WordArt is not as frequently used or discontinued today, they contribute to the typography trend in the theme of simplicity, while adding fun on the side.