Bite the head off a chiclet
Chicklet… chiclet… no matter how you spell it, it is still some guys “clever” marketing speak for small buttons. You know the kind: “Digg This”, “Add to Facebook”, “Add to bookmarks”.
Some guy appearantly thought it would be clever to name them “chiclets”. For those in the know chiclet is actually a brand of chewing gum, the name of keyboard buttons as on a calculator or remote control.
Sure the buttons are as annoying as getting chewing gum on your shoes, because we designers tend to put them in the footer. Is that why it got that name?
People where I work now want these everywhere. It is painful to hear people blurting out these “trendy” names. I have two things to say to the person who minted the expression for these buttons: “Please STOP”.
If something is a button, then it is a button. Exclamation mark. Refer to things as “graphical button” or “styled button”. It is not something new and fantastic or even very hard. Most of the time it is an image or textreplaced link leading to one of the social bookmarking sites.
It is NOTHING new, and NO it will not make you sound clever.
If you want to invent a new terminology, PLEASE for the love of the gods make sure it actually DESCRIBES the function or use of the item.
Here are some acceptable replacements:
- “Social-link”
- “Styled button”
- “cross site link”
and my favourite
- “button”
