Design and Emotion

Using insights from our more than 500 million Shutterstock downloads, discover which emotions businesses, marketing agencies, and media organizations are using to design an ongoing relationship with their customers.

Demand for images representing sadness more than doubled in the last year.
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Joyous images are chosen five times as often as sad images.
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Fear is selected nearly twice as often as surprise.
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Love ranks as the top human emotion.
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Based on images purchased, these six emotions have increased in 2015 from the prior year.

+73%
Love
+86%
Joy
+71%
Fear
+101%
Sadness
+61%
Surprise
+52%
Anger

Sadness
Surprise
Joy
Fear
Anger
Love

Discover the video clips used in Mix and Match.

Searches for emojis and emoticons on Shutterstock have grown 255 percent from a year ago. Choose a country’s flag to see their top emoticon.

Albania Algeria Angola Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belgium Bolivia Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Cambodia Canada Canary Islands Cape Verde Chile China Colombia The Democratic Republic of the Congo Costa Rica Ivory Coast Croatia
Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia Ethiopia Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Polynesia Gabon Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Guam Guatemala Honduras Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Ireland Isle of Man
Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Korea Kosovo Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Latvia Lebanon Lithuania Luxembourg Macedonia Malaysia Malta Martinique Mauritius Mexico Moldova Monaco Mongolia Morocco Mozambique Namibia Netherlands Netherlands Antilles New Zealand
Nicaragua Nigeria Norway Oman Pakistan Panama Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Qatar Romania Russia Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Singapore Slovakia Slovenia South Africa Spain Sweden Switzerland Taiwan Tanzania Thailand Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey
Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Venezuela Vietnam British Virgin Islands U.S. Virgin Islands Yemen Zimbabwe
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For more information about the trends in this report, contact press@shutterstock.com.

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