we all know the boring, grey abstract icon that is used as a placeholder for people without a profile picture. Exept it didn't always have to be this way.
Before the boring, grey shapes took over, the replacement for having not profile pictue was a small character that appeared to be made of coloured glass, like in the image above.
The service most known for these designs was MSN messenger
in 1999, MSN messenger was created by microsoft - to compete with AOL instant messenger - and was rebranded to windows online messenger (also known as WOM) in 2005
In 2011, Windows Online Messenger was replaced by Skype, which lead to where we are today.
The flattening of our small glassy character happened when a new design language callled "frutiger metro" took over.
frutiger metro consist of single coloured, flat objects. This design is shown in places like windows 8 and the IPod silhouette ads.