๐Ÿ’ฌ The Wrap

What happens in April in the emoji calendar?

  1. The first vendors begin supporting the new emoji list. So far this includes Twitter, and will soon Microsoft will join with the "Windows 10 April (or May!?) 2019 Update".

  2. It's 100 days until World Emoji Day. So..if you or your company are doing anything for the big day, reply to this email with details ๐Ÿฅณ

  3. Okay so it's not a big month for emoji news, but there's plenty of interesting articles below (including a correction to what we previously reported as the first emoji set)

๐Ÿ”š PS: Jump to the end of this newsletter for a bit of personal news.

Jeremy Burge

๐Ÿ“ฐ News


๐Ÿ’ญ Interesting










๐ŸŽ™ Podcasts

๐Ÿ—“ Events


๐Ÿค— Lastly

Some personal news (as people like to say on the internet). As of the next Unicode Technical Committee meeting, I will be standing down from my role as a vice chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee.

What does this mean to you, the humble emoji user? Very little, to be honest.

Emojis will still be approved, and I'm just one person of many in the process. You'll like some, you'll think some are dumb, and one is obviously missing. It'll be just the same.

Unicode effectively has two tiers when it comes to new emoji proposals:

  • ๐Ÿ“ฅ Unicode Emoji Subcommittee (ESC): reviews incoming proposals, gives feedback if proposals aren't considered up to scratch, declines any that don't meet basic criteria. Of the proposals it forwards to UTC, the ESC makes a recommendation on which should be approved.

  • ๐Ÿ‘ฉโ€โš–๏ธ Unicode Technical Committee (UTC): actually in charge of which Unicode characters are approved, including every new emoji. The UTC is made up of representatives from member organisations and is not obliged to agree with ESC recommendations on any new emoji.

As I write this, there are 17 voting members of Unicode and they are: Adobe, Apple, Berkeley, Emojipedia, Facebook, Google, Government of India, Huawei, IBM, Microsoft, Monotype, Sultanate of Oman, Government of Tamil Nadu, Netflix, Oracle, and SAP.

๐Ÿ—ณ Full members get one vote each, and supporting members (such as Emojipedia) get half a vote.

While I am standing down from my vice chair role within the Emoji Subcommittee (ESC), I'll continue representing Emojipedia at Technical Committee meetings (UTC), and remain a member of the ESC.

Oh, and since you're here, here's a fresh document published with priorities of the Emoji Subcommittee going forward.

My hope in the coming years is that new emojis focus on filling gaps left in the current set (especially for much requested additions like a black family), while simultaneously raising the bar for approvals of everything else.

Jeremy Burge