Emoji Decode
Put you music knowledge to the test!
On a Friday night in the Dusty Speakers slack, by accident a game began. A member wrote out the band they were listening to in emoji. “That’s fun here. Here is a few more.” And there went the weekend, three days of everyone jumping in to stump everyone else. The part that amazed me was how a language developed and evolved as we went along. It was a blast.
We collected all the bands into a very dense spreadsheet, over 500 bands across every genre waiting to stump music fans everywhere. I started to explore different quiz platforms… I decided it quickest to design & code a website while simultaneously releasing on social platforms.
2021
Creative Director
⬛️ In-house
⬛️ Agency
⬛️ Freelance
☑️ Self-Initiated
Concept
Branding
Web design
Motion design
Coding
Copy writing
Social content
Marketing
⬇️ Check out the promo video for the game ⬇️
Brand
Take your pick.
Initially the name of the game was “Guess The Band Emoji” which explains the game well, but also keeps it stuck in music. I changed the name to Emoji Decode thinking there was/is a world in which we replicate the game for books, comics, and movies. Since this is about music, I echoed the type of famous music venue CBGB and had the shape form a guitar pick. I found a place for a 🔍 to communicate the fun/game/quiz aspect.
I wanted color to be important as a way-finding tool in the UI, with each hue representing a genre. For instance if you were in electronic you would see green backgrounds, illustration, and animation. These differences helped bring the game to life.
Web layout
I started with a information architecture problem… how to sort all the bands to make it playable by the average music fan? I decided on broad genre labels, then ranked by difficulty of translation rather than popularity of band since that was circumstantial. The google sheets database I built was full of meta data: all genres/sorts, level, author, date, and if post on social.
To go the extra mile, I created a “training montage” where I spelled out some of the language paired with Rocky GIFs to get you ready.
Custom cursors are my weakness because I am from the Geocities era of the internet. It was obvious I needed to use the Bowie emoji as the base.
Social release
I know using a website isn’t for everyone these days so as a secondary discovery mechanism I built the emoji sequences as self contained animations to post on social for folks to play in-feed.
HINT: The band's big hit was a (mmm)bop.The FINAL FACT
People really love emoji— it’s the fastest growing language on Earth. Over 347,000 emojis are sent per second on Facebook Messenger. That translates to 5 billion emoji a day just on in that platform.