💬 The Wrap
Season's greetings from Dublin, Ireland emoji aficionados one and all! Emojipedia's Deputy Emoji Officer Keith Broni here, taking over the Emoji Wrap reigns this month while Jeremy contends with the frosty tides of middle England.
I hope that this edition of Emoji Wrap finds you well fed and watered as the holiday season continues and that you've been able to enjoy yourselves, despite the circumstances, as we approach 2021 (and New Year's Eve emoji usage). Here's hoping that the 💉 Syringe emoji sees a huge uptick in usage (an already-emergent trend according to my own big 2020 emoji analysis) and we can all leave COVID-19 firmly behind us in the new year.
As always, please find below a roundup of the latest emoji news of the last few weeks, which includes a roundup of 2020 emoji trends 📈, royal emoji usage 👑, the release of a new emoji documentary 🎥, and an introduction to a new festive addition to our emoji keyboards 🧑🎄.
💭 Interesting
📈 Emoji Trends In 2020
In an analysis of over 650 million tweets sent throughout 2020, I take a deep dive into our emoji usage trends during a year dominated by a global pandemic. But despite our lives being somewhat curtailed this year, our emojis lives appeared to flourish, with over 20% of all tweets sent in the latter months of 2020 features at least one emoji.
🔡🤔 Emoji: the future of text?
In August 2018 Keith Houston, author of the book 'Shady Characters' and the punctuation-based blog of the same name, published his first article on emoji history. Earlier this month the thirtieth entry in what was originally intended to be a five post series was published. Described as "a kind of introduction to, or perhaps a summary of" the series thus far, it's an excellent place to start if you've yet to read any of Keith's work on emojis, or if you fancy a refresher.
👋 Meet the new Chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee
Recently(ish) Unicode's Emoji Subcommittee elected a new chair, with Jennifer Daniel of Google taking over the role from Unicode co-founder Mark Davis. Earlier this month Emojipedia's Chief Emoji Officer Jeremy was able to have a chat with Jennifer on the Emoji Wrap podcast, where these two emoji titans discussed the future of the emoji keyboard, the Unicode emoji proposal process, and if less elaborate emoji designs would be better.
🧑 Making gender-neutral emojis is more complicated than you think
Speaking of our new Emoji Subcommittee chair, Wired UK recently published a piece investigating the history behind the growth of greater gender-inclusive emoji design. A project formally proposed by Jennifer Daniel and her team at Google before her ascension to Subcommittee chair, this article covers some of the early struggles in emoji gender representation and discusses the difficulties that designers faced when seeking to represent gender neutrality on the emoji keyboard.
👸 Kate Middleton's Favorite Emojis Include a Cucumber and a Swearing Face | Vanity Fair
As Jonathan Mann so eloquently puts it, everybody uses emoji, and that includes royalty. In a Q&A video on the official Duke and Duchess of Cambridge Instagram page she shares with his husband, Kate Middleton quickly displayed the most recently used emojis on her iPhone's emoji keyboard when thanking fans for including “wonderful emojis” alongside their questions.
👍 Is the Thumbs Up Emoji Really a Coded “Fuck You”?
Once an overtly positive gesture across the western world, the humble thumbs up has seemingly undergone quite the transformation as a symbol in our digital communications. Writing in Harper's Bazaar, Evan Ross Katz wrestles with the realization that a thumbs up emoji may be a more overtly callous response to a text message than even the 🖕 Middle Finger.
🧑🎄 Who Is Mx Claus?
Another one from myself here! In 2020's Emoji 13.0 a new festive non-gender-specific person emoji was introduced to the emoji keyboard: Mx. Claus. Despite not being the first gender neutral person emoji, Mx. Claus is noteworthy for a number of reasons, including the honorific in their name and the fact that they are technically a gender neutral variant on a character from folklore.
🎥 'The Emoji Story' Documentary Now Streaming
'The Emoji Story' (previously titled 'Picture Character') is a documentary co-produced by Emoji Subcommittee Vice Chair Jennifer 8. Lee and features interviews with Jeremy of these here parts. Rumor has it that he has a few emoji-based costume changes. Tickets to view the stream can be purchased via the link below.
🤗 Lastly
Thank you for reading, folks! And a special thank you from me personally: I feel incredibly privileged to have become Emojipedia's Deputy Emoji Officer earlier this year, and I am acutely aware that my role would not exist were it not for the support that readers such as yourself have shown Emojipedia in this strangest of years.
You can follow me personally on Twitter @KeithBroni, or check our my previous work for the Emojipedia blog here.
You can follow Jeremy on Twitter for more emoji thoughts, or on his Instagram and TikTok for boat content.
Also, make sure to check out Emojipedia's Senior Emoji Lexicographer Jane Solomon on both her Twitter @JaneSolomon and the Emojipedia blog.