You remember the sound. That creaky wooden door opening, the little tink of a message arriving, and the frantic clicking of a mouse. But if you close your eyes and think about it, the first thing that actually pops into your brain is probably a tiny, pixelated yellow dude. He’s leaning forward, arms pumping, legs mid-stride. He was the "Running Man," and for about a decade, he was the undisputed king of the desktop.
The aol instant messenger icon wasn't just a logo. Honestly, it was a status symbol for a generation that was just learning how to exist in two places at once. If that yellow guy was in your system tray, you were "on." You were available. You were part of the digital world.
But there’s a lot about that little guy—and the "buddy icons" that followed him—that we’ve kind of collectively misremembered or just never knew in the first place.
The Man Behind the Machine
Most people think the Running Man was just some corporate clip art tossed together by a committee in a boardroom. It wasn't. It was actually the brainchild of JoRoan Lazaro, a creative director who was working at AOL in the mid-90s.
When Lazaro was sketching out the initial concepts, he wasn't looking at "tech" for inspiration. Why would he? In 1997, "tech" didn't really have a look yet. Instead, he dug into the past. He spent hours looking at postwar American logos from the 1940s and 50s. Think of those old-school silhouettes of plumbers, electricians, or delivery men—the kind of "reliable worker" symbols that companies used to signal they were authentic and hardworking.
The Running Man was designed to feel anthropomorphic. He had a round, faceless head and a body that was basically just a few thick strokes. He was supposed to represent us—the users—racing across the new digital frontier.
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Interestingly, while we all remember him as yellow, he went through a bit of an identity crisis. In the very early beta versions of 1997, he was almost a different species. It wasn't until the service went wide that the vibrant yellow became his permanent skin tone. Later, around 2003, they even tried to make him blue for a while to match the "AOL 9.0 Optimized" branding, but users hated it. He eventually went back to his roots because, well, you don't mess with a classic.
Why the AOL Instant Messenger Icon Actually Mattered
We take icons for granted now. Our phones are covered in them. But in the late 90s, the aol instant messenger icon was doing heavy lifting.
Back then, the internet was a destination. You didn't "live" online; you went online. You’d hear the modem scream, wait for the handshake, and then—there he was. Seeing that icon appear in the bottom right corner of your Windows 95 or 98 taskbar was a hit of dopamine before we even knew what dopamine loops were.
The Technical Weirdness of Buddy Icons
While the Running Man was the face of the brand, the "Buddy Icons" were where the real culture happened. These were the 32x32 pixel squares that sat next to your screen name.
If you think about it, 32x32 pixels is an incredibly tiny canvas. That’s only 1,024 pixels total. Yet, people spent hours—seriously, hours—crafting these.
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- The Format: They were usually .gif or .bmp files.
- The Animation: AIM eventually allowed animated GIFs, which led to a chaotic era of flashing text, dancing babies, and scenes from The Matrix compressed into a blurry mess.
- The Expression: Because you couldn't see your friends' faces, the icon became your "vibe." If you had a moody, grayscale icon of a rainy window, everyone knew you were listening to Dashboard Confessional and probably shouldn't be bothered.
It’s wild to realize that these were the ancestors of the modern profile picture. Before Instagram, before Facebook, before the "avatar" was a standard concept, we had these tiny 8-bit representations of our souls.
The Evolution and the "Death" of the Running Man
As the 2000s rolled on, things got... complicated. AOL was trying to stay relevant while Google and Facebook were starting to suck the air out of the room.
In 2006, they actually removed the Running Man from the main speech-bubble logo for a bit. It was a weird move. It was like KFC removing Colonel Sanders. They brought him back in 2009 with a redesign that made him look a bit more "modern"—more fluid, less blocky. But by then, the magic was fading.
By the time 2011 hit, the Running Man was officially retired from the product's main branding. They replaced the iconic logo with a lowercase, sans-serif "aim" that looked like every other tech startup in San Francisco. It lost its personality. It felt corporate.
When AOL finally pulled the plug on the service on December 15, 2017, the original yellow guy made one last appearance in the farewell messages. It was a eulogy for a version of the internet that was loud, ugly, and incredibly intimate.
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The 2026 Perspective: Why We're Still Obsessed
It’s 2026, and we’re seeing a massive "Y2K Renaissance" in tech. Apps like Retro and various lo-fi chat startups are literally trying to copy the exact aesthetic of the aol instant messenger icon.
Why? Because the "Running Man" represented a time when the internet felt like a community you joined, not a product you were consumed by. When you saw that icon, you knew your friends were there. There were no algorithms. There was no "infinite scroll." There was just a list of names and a little yellow guy telling you that someone, somewhere, wanted to talk to you.
What You Can Do Now
If you’re feeling that itch for the old days, you don't have to just look at screenshots on Pinterest.
- Check out Archive.org: They have preserved thousands of original AIM buddy icons. You can actually download them and use them as Discord avatars or Slack icons.
- Look into "Nina": There are several community-run projects (like the Nina project) that act as "revival" servers for old IM clients. They allow you to log into modified versions of old software using your original (or new) screen names.
- Audit your "Availability": The reason the AIM icon felt so good was that it was binary—you were either on or off. Try turning off your "always-on" status on modern apps like Teams or Slack. Reclaim that feeling of choosing to be "available."
The yellow man might be gone from our taskbars, but the way he changed how we think about digital identity is permanent. He was the first person we met when we stepped into the light of the internet. And honestly? He’s still the best mascot we ever had.