Expressive Words

Pilfer

When we were talking about expressive words in class, the first word that popped into my head was “pilfer.” I think maybe it’s a go-to for me, and I think maybe it is a word that feels like its sound aligns well with its literal meaning. With a cursive L and F, I had the opportunity to slip a sneaky pickpocketing into the word, which I think worked pretty well. Here’s a link to where I found the hand icon.

Loop

Then I wanted to try two takes on the same word. I picked “loop,” which I think is a cute little word with a bunch of character. I’m listening to a lot of Amulets and Marcus Fischer lately—both artists who work with tape loops. It quickly made perfect sense to treat the Os in the middle of the word like the spokes in the middle of the cassette tape. Here’s a link to the cassette icon. On the other hand, I think this is an example of an expressive word that might work better if it were animated: the Os could rotate and convey a sense of motion. For a slightly more dynamic approach, I connected the L and the P in a loop, and drew arrows. I think this one would also benefit from being in motion! The idea of looping is a little harder to convey in a word than I think pilfer was, partly because you really only read the word once. Perhaps a third approach would be to draw the word repeating in a circle.