💬 The Wrap
It might have seemed forever in the making but Unicode 11.0 is coming out in just a few days. In practice, that might not mean much as the real date that matters to most people is when new emojis come to phones. More on that in a moment.
On the podcast this month I chat to Bryan Haggerty, the design lead at Twitter in charge of Twemoji. We talk about Easter Eggs in Twitter's emoji designs, and (scoop!) when Twitter is rolling out their new emojis.
It's also Apple's World Wide Developer Conference next week with the keynote on Monday June 4. Will we see any Animoji or emoji details announced? I'll be in San Jose to find out, so if you see me around, come say hello 👋
📰 News
🍔 Google I/O Opens With Emoji Apology
Remember the burger emoji scandal of 2017 when Google CEO Sundar Pichai promised to "drop everything" and fix the burger emoji? Turns out that's what he opened Google I/O with this year.
📝 What's New in Unicode 11.0
Unicode 11.0 is to be released on June 5, 2018. Just a few days from now. I answer some common questions about the release.
📲 Twitter Switches to Twemoji on Android
Android has always suffered from poor emoji support primarily due to lack of updates from OEMs. Twitter has taken this into its own hands by switching native emojis on Android for Twemoji. The result? Android users can all get the latest emojis in Twitter, no matter how old their OS.
💭 Interesting
🎭 Emojis help children understand Shakespeare, teachers say
It could likely be any images, but the idea of visuals making concepts easier to understand makes sense. Emojis being familiar might also give a leg-up.
🙅♀️ Using emojis to teach Shakespeare will not help disadvantaged students, says head
It seems there's no story that can be published - especially if it involves anything new - that won't have pushback. Confected outage? Something about this rebuttal feels like the reporter (s) were fishing for an antagonistic headline and they got it.
😍 Emojiology: Smiling Face With Heart-Eyes
Why do we love the heart-eyes emoji so much, and what exactly does it convey? John Kelly takes a look.
📜 Browse the Emoji Archives
If you didn't know Emojipedia kept an emoji archive going back a decade, here's how to access it.
🔫 It Matters Which Way Your Emoji Gun Faces
A video summarising some of the points made in Jane Solomon's article on the direction of the pistol emoji. Some great hand-drawn emoji illustrations to go with it!
🕵️♀️ Emoji Scavenger Hunt
This is actually pretty fun. The emoji part is mostly a gimmick or hook to get you in, but the idea is that Google tells you something to find - eg a printer - and you have a countdown to point your phone at one. I'm sure this is training the machine learning somewhere.
🔍 Apple’s Emoji Search is Bad
Did you know the Mac has a built in emoji search tool? It used to be quite basic, but reliable. Two years ago Apple updated it to be more clever - in theory - but in practice made it almost unusable.
💗 Analysis shows this emoji used in exploitative online listings
A grim topic, but due to the limited number of emojis they can sometime be used to find trends that is more difficult using other data. From the article: "researchers found three emojis in particular that were indicators of sex trafficking, including the growing heart. It's used by pedophiles to identify young girls".
🎙 Podcasts
🤔 Emoji Wrap #11: We’ll see what Tony Hawk thinks with Bryan Haggerty
I talk to Twitter Design Lead Bryan Haggerty about the very contents of this newsletter! Twemoji updates, whether Twitter's skateboard emoji will be up to scratch, and how do you make emoji search work well?
🗓 Events
🎟 July 14: Emojicon
Emojicon is an emoji conference in New York City on July 14, just a few days prior to World Emoji Day. Tickets are $99, and available now.
👯♀️ July 17: Emojiland the Musical
Emojiland is a brand new emoji-based musical premiering in New York City on July 17 for World Emoji Day. Part of the New York Musical Festival.
📆 July 17: World Emoji Day
This will be the fifth annual World Emoji Day! Two requests: 1. If you're planning something for World Emoji Day, get in touch! We want to know. 2. Are you in 🇦🇺 Australia or the wider 🌏 Asia-Pacific region and great at social media? Come tweet for @WorldEmojiDay this July 17. Details here.
🤗 Lastly
A welcome to all the new subscribers who have joined this month. Emoji Wrap comes out no more than once a month, and I hope you find it a useful summary of what's going on in emoji world.
Want to send feedback? Tweet either @EmojiWrap or @jeremyburge 💕