💬 The Wrap
In 2014 I decided to declare July 17 to be World Emoji Day. Mostly as a bit of fun, a chance to encourage emoji-use on social media.
It seemed like if there can be an Answer Your Cat's Questions Day, Talk Like A Pirate Day, and Eat an Extra Dessert Day (all real in the sense that someone has declared them to be so) then why shouldn't there be a World Emoji Day?
What does this look like in 2020? A holiday about smiley faces during a global pandemic. It's not ideal, but what is?
Behind the scenes, it's a matter of ensuring there's a team to keep an eye on what's happening. Elevate the good stuff. Ignore the junk. Be aware of what's happening around the globe at the same time.
"Wait before I share this, is Bill Nye cancelled?" one of the team asked on the Slack channel before being re-assured that no, we still think Bill Nye is cool and we'll share his World Emoji Day post. It's a fairly fun and lightweight day, but it doesn't mean you want to unintentionally promote people with a history of problematic behaviour.
Once a day exists, no-one really controls it. Yes Emojipedia runs the social accounts to keep things on the rails, but if we did nothing on the day, that doesn't mean other people and companies wouldn't still make their own announcements on July 17, 'for World Emoji Day'.
There is the question of tone. World Emoji Day isn't Emojipedia. It's a day. Do days have opinions? Not really. The focus aims to be there to share what others are doing, not for the World Emoji Day social accounts to be the day.
For me personally, much of July 16-18 is spent doing TV and radio in all the most inconvenient time zones (hello Australian afternoon radio at 4am), and speaking with reporters keen to write up a specific angle on emoji use, emoji approvals, or whatever seems most relevant on the day. Until about 2015 I ran all the social accounts for the day myself, but trying to fit in press interviews while parsing 100,000+ tweets in a day just isn't good for anyone's sanity.
Some of the main announcements from the day I've listed below. From my perspective, the most notable being Google returning to emoji designs with cuter personalities, and any time Apple shows new emojis, people are always interested.
I'm well aware that there's more important things on the planet than emoji, or technology at all. But there are some interesting stories worth noting, while we all just try to find the best balance we can.
Take care out there, and I hope you got something out of the day 💕
📰 News
🐢 Android 11's turtle emoji reverts back to an adorable one
Leaked ahead of Google's World Emoji Day Announcement: 9to5Mac had its hands on the cute emoji overhaul last month.
The other half of Google's World Emoji Day announcement was the 117 new emojis coming to Android. It was nice to see these in detail, however these were already in the Android 11 beta a month earlier, so it was more of a refresher on what had been shown publicly in advance.
👀 First Look: New Emojis Coming to iOS in 2020
Apple in recent years has saved its first-look at the new iOS emojis for World Emoji Day, and 2020 was no different. While Twitter often has these on the web by June, as does the Android beta around this time, the Apple approach in recent years has been:
Preview some of the new emojis on World Emoji Day. The rest come out in a beta around September. The final release to the public is in October.
There's consistently more public interest in the Apple emoji set than any other. Potentially in part due to Apple's early dominance of emoji support, but a more likely explanation is that on Android users see a mix of emojis from Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Google (or Samsung) depending on the app and device. So you're less emotionally invested in any one set.
An Apple user with an iPhone and a Mac sees the same emojis all day, in the majority of apps. Not to mention the stereotype of Apple users 'caring more' about design. It's hard to quantify that later statement, but it appears to hold, even if it's not a universal truth.
🏆 The Most Popular New Emoji Is
People used to ask "oh so what is Emojipedia doing for World Emoji Day" and I'd be all like .."um, nothing? We're helping share whatever the rest of you are doing!"
In the last few years the World Emoji Awards have become the thing we do.
Partly for fun, but it's also interesting to see which new emojis have resonated in everyday use, and which ones people are looking forward to.
Results in this post for each of the three awards. You might have seen me on The Morning Show in Australia or Cheddar in the US revealing two of the award results live.
💭 Interesting
📆 July 17 is World Emoji Day Everywhere Now
The date on the Calendar emoji used to vary by company. It was somewhat of an Easter egg, each company would pick a date that meant something to them.
Then along I came and ruined it, by choosing July 17 as World Emoji Day. Inevitably, confusion reigned when people would share this emoji on July 17 and others would see various dates from Twitter, Google, Microsoft or Samsung.
Now Twitter has changed their emoji to show July 17, which matches the majority of major vendors.
🇬🇧 Emoji projected onto the Houses of Parliament for World Emoji Day
I love that the Houses of Parliament had a giant emoji projected for World Emoji Day.
What I love less is the slightly tone-deaf messaging of 'smile more' while showing an emoji with lipstick, implying a woman emoji. The same campaign 'hope to make you smile' with a more neutral emoji would have done the same job, but without the (what I'm assuming was unintentional) connotation of asking women to smile more in public.
🍼 Facebook's proposed emoji illustrates yet another glaring blindspot
When designing emojis that feel human, it's natural to want to add cute and specific details. They look great. The trouble with something like the new Person Feeding Baby emoji is that showing the skin tone of the baby by default implies it has to share a skin tone with the mother.
It's somewhat of a technical limitation, but the workaround suggested by Unicode for this (and the breastfeeding emoji) is to swaddle the baby, so you can't see it's skin. Low-tech, but it does avoid the need for the baby to have its own skin tone modifier options.
🧑⚖️ Google, Sony, Others Sued Over Wi-Fi Messaging, Emoji Tech
The gist of this lawsuit:
✅ Sending emojis over cellular connection: fine 💰 Sending emojis over WiFi is very clever and deserves a special patent you see
🤗 Lastly
This newsletter comes out no more than once a month, but I have to admit it's been a while between outings!
I want to thank all the people involved in the planning, designing and rolling out of emoji updates.
Also to the World Emoji Day social team who sit in all timezones to make sure that if something interesting is done on the day, it can get a little love shared on social media.
This year World Emoji Day was also on TikTok for the first time. If you're there and want to follow for next year, please do.
Thoughts? Send me a tweet.