Animated icons have become an increasingly popular way of representing functionality in digital technology. There is a little knowledge on the benefits of animated icons but digital animations have been examined in the last decades. The benefit of animation can be revealed by representing the complex image contents. The aim of this study was finding out the superiority of icons of representing the content which is an intrinsic complex. It was also investigated what kind of characters makes the animated or static icons more effective way of representing the content of icons. The contents of icons were related of the measured variables of running technique. The superiority of icons of representing the content was assessed by measuring the semantic distance between animated and static icons with the computer task. Furthermore, qualitative results were collected by interviewing the participants on the experiences of compared differences between animated and static icons. The participants of this study were students (24 participants). The semantic distance was measured with the primed icon comparison task where participants chose between either of two icons which represents more appropriately the word (prime). Participants were performed the total of 360 choices on the combined primes and icon pairs. Primed icon comparison task was analyzed by preference ranking arrays in which icons were compared to each other on the preference scores. In addition, animated and static icons were compared on the preference-related reaction times. The total number of icons were 16, half of the icons are animated and static. The results indicate that both dynamic and static icon versions can be a good choice to represent the content of the icon. According to the results, the animated icons do not appear to be a particularly useful on representing the complex contents. There may be that static icon is particularly a better choice for representing the moment of motion. Unlike the static icon, the animated icon might be a better choice of representing mechanical motions. It seems that the animated icon does not in itself increase the cognitive load with a dynamic characters.