💬 The Wrap
It's UTC week, with the next Unicode Technical Committee meeting being held at Microsoft in Redmond from August 2—5. Emoji topics on the agenda include discussion of new gendered emojis and proposals for new Unicode 10 emoji candidates.
This coming month: expect to see both Android and Windows roll out their Unicode 9 emoji updates. This is a change from past years where iOS has tended to receive major emoji updates first.
And how about that Olympic Rings emoji appearing in the latest WhatsApp? This report now says it may be replaced next release 🤔
📰 News
🎉 Happy #WorldEmojiDay
July 17 was the third annual World Emoji Day and here's what we were doing to celebrate at Emojipedia.
🙋 Promoting gender equality through emoji
Google: "More than 90 percent of the world's online population use emoji. But while there's a huge range of emoji, there aren't a lot that highlight the diversity of women's careers, or empower young girls". List here.
🙅 Feedback on Gendered Emoji Proposals
Feedback covering counter-arguments on the current gendered emoji plans. More here on emoji, gender, and how far this should go.
🙇 Emoji etiquette guide on lying, drooling, clown faces
When is the right time to send these new emojis?
🐦 Twitter Expands Twemoji for Unicode 9
Twitter became the first major vendor to add support for Unicode 9 emojis.
📜 Brief history of emoji
If you're new to emoji, this is a succinct article of its origins. Other articles go more in depth on the Unicode integration, but this is a great starting point.
🇬🇧 Emoji Flags for England, Scotland and Wales
A proposal up for discussion at UTC 148 looking at emoji flags for England, Scotland and Wales. Disclaimer: I am one of the authors of this proposal.
🔍 Searching For The Perfect Emoji For Any Occasion
Dango is doing some impressive work here in applying meanings to emojis using "big data".
🍰 Cake Wars Emoji Episode
Featuring none of the than Gedeon Maheux of Iconfactory fame, judging the design of each emoji cake.
🤓 Typeface Designer Talks Emoji Designs
Paul is a member of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee, and a typeface designer at Adobe chatting about all things emoji design.
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🔣 Unicode
🇪🇬 Adopt-A-Character Grant to Support Egyptian Hieroglyphs
Funds received from the Unicode Adopt-A-Character program have been granted for research on additional hieroglyphs for Unicode.
🌈 Rainbow Flag Emoji Documented
With the sequence for the rainbow flag emoji now specified, vendor support is very possible this year.
↔️ Emoji ZWJ Sequences
Expect to see a lot more Emoji ZWJ Sequences in the future, some documented, others undocumented.
🇮🇳 Maharashtra gets membership of Unicode Consortium
"It will also help get characters for emojis that are rooted in Marathi culture"
🗓 Events
🗓 August 12-16: PyCon Australia
Katie McLaughlin will be speaking at PyCon Australia on "The Power and Responsibility of Unicode Adoption"
🤗 Lastly
I am pleased to announce that Owen Williams, formerly of The Next Web, will be joining me on the Emojipedia blog in August. Expect to see more regular contributions there from the two of us.
Finally, thanks so much for subscribing, to every one of the 4,000 people now receiving Emoji Wrap each month. And to our new subscribers, welcome 😍