What happens in April in the emoji calendar?
The first vendors begin supporting the new emoji list. So far this includes Twitter, and will soon Microsoft will join with the āWindows 10 April (or May!?) 2019 Updateā.
Itās 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 š„³
Okay so itās not a big month for emoji news, but thereās plenty of interesting articles below (including a correction to what we previously reported as the first emoji set)
š PS: Jump to the end of this newsletter for a bit of personal news.
š° News
š iOS 12.2 Emoji Changelog
š What itās not: Apple supporting the new emoji list for 2019
š What it is: a few minor emoji tweaks from Apple that you would have never noticed if not reading this
š¦ Twemoji 12.0 Emoji Changelog
If youāre using the Twitter website, youāve now got access to all the new emojis approved this year.
š Interesting
š² Correcting the Record on the First Emoji Set
Turns out, the āfirst emoji setā often discussed as being from Japanese carrier Docomo in 1999 isnāt the first. Arguably, it was J-Phone two years earlier, with a set most closely represented by Apple today.
š¤Ŗ The Emoji Challenge is Taking Over Group Chats With Friends
Why are none of my group chats doing this, is what I want to know.
š QID Emoji Proposal
Hereās something interesting. A proposal from Unicode president Mark Davis to allow anything with a Wikipedia page to be an emoji, should a platform vendor (like Apple or Google) wish to support it.
Pro: this could mean Unicode doesnāt get stuck encoding literally every object on planet earth as an emoji until the end of days.
Con: this is probably better used for edge cases, or things that might not have a strong case to have their own Unicode code point. If thatās the case, perhaps those edge cases just arenāt good ideas for an emoji in the first place.
šæ Emojiology: Angry Face With Horns
More than you knew you wanted to know about šæ
š§ Googleās Three Gender Emoji Future
Apologies for the headline: what Iām trying to convey here is that going forward, Google will have three options for appearance where there is currently at most, two (woman and man). The third option is a gender inclusive or gender neutral design, which if expanded to include every emoji, would allow users to send a police officer, runner, or dancer without requiring a choice of gender.
š©š¾āš¦± Thereās No Afro Emoji. These Women Want to Change That.
IMO the better option here is that vendors make the new (ish) curly hair emoji have more afro-like hair. If weāre aiming for increased representation, we donāt need both short curly hair and longer afro-like curly hair options. Just make afro how this emoji looks.
(it basically was intended to be an afro emoji when added to the emoji set anyway)
š How to Use Emojis
āRemember that emojis donāt have set meaning, grammar or syntax; they consist mostly of nouns, including š¦and š„©. Still, collectively, we are giving these little pictures semantics as we goā
š How Japanās new imperial era broke the internet in a very tiny way
Not emoji related, but Unicode-related.
TL;DR - Unicode reserved a character in advance for the Japanās new imperial era. Needed a special release for it and everything.
Spoiler: as best as Iām aware tell, it all went smoothly. Though I donāt think (?) any fonts yet include support for the new glyph.
š§© Iconic wooden toy emoji jigsaw
I just thought this looked quite nice? Using the old (free) EmojiOne set.
š„ xkcd: Emojidome
I donāt think thereās a way to replay this, but at the time, XKCD had a bracket facing off two emoji choices against each other every 40 seconds. The next round would allow double the time to vote. I think you could vote as many times as you liked - clicking frantically to add votes during the time.
Well implemented - even if the winner and runner-up are seemingly quite random (and not reflective of which emojis are most used).
š Podcasts
š Emoji Wrap with Ollie Wagner
This month I spoke with Ollie Wagner, one of the few people involved in the earliest emoji designs from Apple.
š Events
š April 26 ā āWriting: Making Your Markā (The British Library)
āFrom carved stone inscriptions, medieval manuscripts and early printed works to beautiful calligraphy, iconic fonts and emojis, Writing: Making Your Mark (26 April ā 27 August 2019) will deconstruct the act of writing and consider its future in the digital ageā
š¬ April 28 ā āPicture Characterā (Tribeca Film Festival)
āPicture Character follows the path of smiling poops and heart-eyed faces, tackles the development of skin tones, and tracks the evolution of the global digital language.ā
š¤ 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 Iām just one person of many in the process. Youāll like some, youāll think some are dumb, and one is obviously missing. Itāll be just the same.
Unicode effectively has two tiers when it comes to new emoji proposals:
š„ Unicode Emoji Subcommittee (ESC): reviews incoming proposals, gives feedback if proposals arenāt considered up to scratch, declines any that donāt meet basic criteria. Of the proposals it forwards to UTC, the ESC makes a recommendation on which should be approved.
š©āāļø 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.
š³ 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), Iāll continue representing Emojipedia at Technical Committee meetings (UTC), and remain a member of the ESC.
Oh, and since youāre here, hereās 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