💬 The Wrap
Hello from San Jose California, where the next Unicode Technical Committee meeting has just begun.
I'm here on behalf of Emojipedia and on the agenda are candidates for the 2019 emoji set, with some of the most visible so far being Apple’s proposal for accessibility emojis (made public last month) as well as a proposal looking at whether more color options (⚪️🔴⚫️🔵) should be made available for future emoji releases. White wine is always a popular request, and these could assist with that.
Here's another proposal I like a lot: Pinching gesture (can be used to mean "small")
This meeting won't determine that final emoji list for 2019, but it is an important step along the way.
📰 News
🦁 iOS 11.3 Emoji Changelog
Now Apple uses the same 3D models for Animoji and emoji, we get updates like this.
🐦 Twemoji 2.6 Emoji Changelog
Lots of minor tweaks from Twemoji, but also that gun emoji change. We had Apple move to a water pistol in 2016, WhatsApp in 2017, Samsung in 2018, then Twitter just this month.
📲 Google Updates Gun Emoji
This might be the first emoji update that Google is rolling out via EmojiCompat. This means that apps with EmojiCompat support will see the new water pistol, while the rest will see the old one. To be rectified when Android P comes out later in the year.
🖥 Windows 10 April 2018 Update Emoji Changelog
New today: lots of emoji tweaks from Microsoft. Mostly bringing emojis in line with Apple and Google. I like seeing gradual improvements like this.
🔫 All Major Vendors Commit to Gun Redesign
First there was one. And now every major vendor has either switched their pistol emoji to a water pistol, or they have committed to doing so in 2018.
💭 Interesting
🐰 How Feminists in China Are Using Emoji to Avoid Censorship
This was something I wasn't aware about until reading this article from Margaret Anderson.
👑 Cher is the Queen of Emoji even if she isn’t
I don't know how I missed this last year, but here's some great stats from linguist Tyler Schnoebelen mapping emoji use by celebrities over time; including Nicki Minaj, Snoop Dogg, DJ Khaled and of course Cher.
👍🏽 Emoji skin tone options 'being used positively'
There was some concern at the time of releasing emoji skin tone support that this would be used in an overwhelmingly negative way. This research says otherwise.
😏 Emojiology: Smirking Face
~cue Jerry Seinfeld voice~ "What's the deal with the smirk? Is it smug or sexy? How is it both!" John Kelly looks into how we're using this flexible emoji.
🇹🇼 Chinese iPhones Won't Show This Emoji
Are you on an iPhone with the region set to China? If so, the emoji in this title won't show.
🎨 OpenMoji
A new open source emoji project from Interaction and Communication Design students of the Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd (University of Applied Sciences). With EmojiOne going for a freemium model in 2017, there seems to be renewed interest in open source projects like this.
🗓 Events
💬 Type@Cooper: Emoji: Personal is Political
If you're interested in learning more about emoji design, this workshop from Adobe's Paul Hunt could be your thing. In San Fransisco this June.
🤗 Lastly
There’s been a lot of new subscribers to Emoji Wrap this month, so if this is your first issue, welcome! We’ve got a great team at Emojipedia that cover emerging trends in emoji usage, as well as documenting changes from each vendor in how they display various emojis.
You can follow me at @jeremyburge on Twitter, or follow this newsletter and podcast of the same name at @EmojiWrap.