From the archivist
It started with a game that needed a few authentic AIM icons. Then I had 1,000. Then 10,000. At some point, I had a buddy icon problem.
Read how this happenedYou made it this far
You have scrolled past 1,024 buddy icons, so I have some suspicions. My blog is where the other shiny digressions end up.
Subscribe to Shedletsky.comA language of tiny pictures
A picture barely 50 pixels wide, sitting beside an AIM screen name, could announce a mood, a fandom, an inside joke, or who someone wanted to be that day.
Read the short historyRecovered from the early web
Buddy icons survive in old directories, fan sites, downloadable packs, and web archives. The archive preserves the original files, groups known copies, and records where each one was found.
How the archive worksText Only buddy icons center on lettering itself, where words, captions, and stylized glyph layouts are the main visual content in a tiny canvas. Border bars, repeated lines, gradients, and stacked text variants keep the icon readable even without a clear character subject.
![Black text on white background reads 'girls rule' above '[boys drool]' and 'enough said.'](/image/1058076df30f5e18f9a8e220f6c0d2d65fbb69d064de4e1531a8a8ebac971b2d)
