Kinetic Typography, text whose appearance changes over time, is emerging as a new form of expression due to its ability to add emotional content to text. We explored the potential for kinetic typography to improve the way people communicate over the Internet using Instant Messaging (IM). Our Kinetic Instant Messenger (KIM) builds upon applications for rendering and editing kinetic typography effects and addresses several design issues that spring from integrating kinetic typography and IM. Keywords Kinetic typography, dynamic text, instant messaging, chat