The most commonly used emoji are overwhelmingly positive and yet online dialogue doesn’t always feel so cheerful. We doom scroll. We rage bait. We hate read. In these moments when we indulge in inflammatory engagement, words often fail us and smashing the thumbs down emoji just doesn’t cut it.

A new fighter has entered the chat: The Fight Cloud (🫯) emoji.

Whether you know it as the “Big Ball of Violence” from Looney Tunes, a “dust cloud” from the Sims, or as a "chaotic rumble” from the Saturday morning newspaper cartoons, the fight cloud 🫯remains the world's most recognizable way to denote a fight. Born a century ago, this cloud, punctuated with stars, has told us to brace ourselves: things are getting messy.

The Art of Not Showing

Before fight clouds, artists had to draw every messy detail of a physical struggle. That is until the era of Felix the Cat and Mickey Mouse which pioneered the slapstick grammar of comics and animation. This is when we see dust clouds, or fight clouds, operate as a visual pronoun: a way to hide the details of the fight and let our brains do the inferential work.

While developing the emoji proposal for fight cloud I worked with Neil Cohn, Associate Professor at Tilburg University and author of The Visual Language of Comics. Neil calls the fight cloud a “cheat code.” “With a [fight] cloud, you don’t need to draw the actual fight or the actual transformation... it pushes people to infer what they aren’t seeing directly.” It signals an epic event without the need for graphic violence, or detailed accuracy. It acknowledges tension but keeps it silly.” Like, when you’re arguing over which actor gave the definitive performance as Batman.

Not All Heroes Wear Capes: Fight Cloud, Technical hero

The fight cloud emoji also aids in a major technical milestone: the final step in a decade-long journey to ensure all human emoji have skin tone options.

Fun Fact: There is a lot of technical complexity behind those smiling eyes in your emoji. Zero Width Joiners (ZWJ), or "digital glue", are hidden characters that tell our devices to fuse separate icons into one. It’s the same tech that gives us lady technologist (👩+💻= 👩‍💻), heart on fire (❤️+🔥=❤️‍🔥), handshakes (🫱🏻+🫲🏿=🫱🏻‍🫲🏿), kissing couples (👩🏻+❤️+💋+👨🏿=👩🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏿) and now, it's finally the wrestlers' turn.

By using the fight cloud, Unicode can now create Wrestlers that represent any combination of skin tones. There’s even a handy-dandy equation to illustrate it:

👩🏿‍🫯‍👩🏽= [👩] + [Skin Tone 🏿] + [ZWJ] + 🫯+ [ZWJ] + [ 👩] + [Skin Tone 🏾] . Don’t worry, you won’t be tested on this.

One Cloud, Many “Poofs”

Because the cloud represents a “period of time,” its utility goes somewhere beyond the other action-adjacent emoji like collision 💥. As Neil Cohn explains, “The most interesting difference is duration. [Fight] clouds mean multiple things happening over a period of time —punching, kicking, biting — while action stars show a single sudden event.’”

Transformation: Use it for a “magical poof” or a wardrobe change 🧍🫯🦸 or a glow up 🐥🫯🐓

Sexy time: All emoji are sex emoji if you use a little imagination. 💕🫯💞

Arguments: A visual for those heated “disagreements” in the comments section 🫯

Whether we’re wrestling with a difficult decision or just describing a chaotic family visit, the fight cloud 🫯 is proof that sometimes, the best way to get everything out there is to hide it inside a cloud. 🫯

Editor’s note: Neil Cohn’s new book, Speaking in Pictures, is now available! You can order from most major bookstores or via his site.

As the emoji keyboard matures, the criteria for what earns a permanent spot on our devices is evolving from “What’s missing?” to “What is indispensable?” In the early days, we had roughly 700 emoji. Today, we’re nearing 4,000. While more emoji feels like a win it has simultaneously made using and creating new emoji significantly harder. Despite thousands of options, a mere handful (😂❤️😍🤣😊) represent a quarter of all emoji use.

And yet, today the Emoji Standard and Research Working Group stands before you with open arms officially accepting 2026’s emoji submissions. Before you hit submit, here are some things to take in consideration.

The Swiss Army Knife vs. The Single-Use Plastic Knife

If your proposal identifies a missing noun, it’s already behind the curve. Adding hyper-specific objects like a niche tool, a specific household object, or a rare animal creates a long tail problem: more clutter with less actual utility. The “Noun Era” of emoji was an important era but will never be complete and isn’t sustainable.

Pro-Tip: Aim for semantic density. We need symbols that work like a Swiss Army Knife: versatile enough to be used in ten different ways, not just one. The Pig Face 🐷 is a masterclass in utility. It’s a literal animal, a symbol for hunger, a nod to the Lunar New Year, or a cheeky warning that the cops are nearby.

The Burden of Immortality

A technical truth often overlooked is that Unicode is forever. I wish the mere presence of a DVD emoji 📀 secured its relevancy into the future (I miss those Director's commentaries), but alas, it sits in our keyboards and at Goodwill collecting cobwebs.

Every encoded emoji is a permanent addition to our global digital footprint and “tax” on our devices’ memory and keyboard real estate. Unlike an app, Unicode characters are not removed after they have been encoded.

Pro Tip: Resist the "Brand Ambassador" mindset. Specific nouns are wonderful for stickers and GIFs since they are the ‘slang’ of the internet. If it’s “very 2026” it is probably too early to get inducted into the permanent collection. Think about what the world was using a thousand years ago, today, and will continue to use in 2128.

The Interoperability Check

Interoperability is why Unicode makes emoji in the first place. They are here to make sure we see the same symbols on every screen so when you send a butterfly 🦋 it doesn’t mysteriously change from a monarch to a morpho or vice versa. Does your emoji solve a long standing Interoperability problem? Don’t just look for aesthetic differences; provide evidence of miscommunication.

Pro-tip: Not all problems can be solved by adding a new emoji and research can help determine the severity of the problem. It doesn’t hurt to consult reports published by the ESR. While a teapot 🫖 that is red on one phone and white on another, there isn’t evidence that this is significantly impacting the selection of this emoji. However, get a load of this whimsical comet that looks like a psychopathic fireball on another device.

Can you spell your emoji?

Before you spend twenty hours researching a "nervous breakdown” emoji, ask yourself: Can I already "spell" this? If your idea can be communicated by a combination of two existing emoji, it likely doesn’t need to be a new character but it does make for a cute text. 🤸🕳️

Pro-tip: Ask yourself if your emoji is atomic. Is the idea so foundational it cannot be broken down into smaller parts?1

Provide Evidence, not Anecdotes

You don’t need to work for a messaging app to have data! Use Google Trends. All proposals need to include search query screenshots to help illustrate if people are searching for your emoji concept more than they are searching for a median performing emoji.

Pro-tip: Compare your idea to the 'benchmark' emoji (elephant 🐘) to lend some credence to its value. Don’t just tell us people want it: show us the data.

What’s next?

After you submit, you’ll be notified before the end of the year (November-ish) if your proposal has advanced to the next stage; however, if your proposal is declined, I know it will come as a disappointment. 💕 For what it’s worth, there are loads of reasons why proposals are declined, including:

• ➕ It can be represented by a sequence. (Ex. Hand washing 🤲🧼💧)

• 🔍 It’s too specific. We can’t add every type of flower, every hairstyle, or every breed of dog no matter how cute they are. ;-)

• 🔥 Lack of metaphorical depth” (i.e., it only means one thing).

• 💰 Scarcity. Very few are selected. Very few.

• 🐣 It’s a transient concept. Think “stable, long-standing concepts” rather than “memes.”

As emoji enter their second decade in the Unicode Standard, it’s a good time to acknowledge how far we have come since those first four mailboxes 📫📪📬📭 since they continue to haunt us in our keyboards. Reconciling the rapid, transient nature of modern communication with the formal, methodical process required by a standards body like the Unicode Consortium is the name of the game these days. Until we can send any image in the world alongside text messages and not just code points …. well, Unicode is here for the world’s emoji related needs. 💖

Remain committed to making your proposal the best it can be? Some further reading and videos on this topic include: How to write a successful proposal and how to write the worst proposal. If you’re drafting a document, I encourage you to familiarize yourself with the criteria for inclusion and the criteria for exclusion.

This week, emoji are slowly rolling into our keyboards and the first sighting of Bigfoot 🫈 is in the Android 17 update. Alongside our favorite hairy creature is a Distorted Face emoji 🫪. If you’ve been double tapping 😳😳 in the Emoji Kitchen, you’ve likely met this latest recruit to the Unicode Standard, but even if you haven’t it’s a face that will feel familiar.

The Art of Distortion: From Da Vinci to SOPHIE

You might think of the Distorted Face 🫪 as a modern invention but we’ve been manipulating our faces with this kind of tension for centuries. From Da Vinci’s 15th-century grotesques to Francis Bacon (“If you want to convey fact and if you have to do it, then this can only ever be done through a form of distortion”1) this technique is used to express a great deal of feeling beyond what the muscles in our faces are literally able to flex.

In the 1930s, animators turned this into a science with 'squash and stretch,' proving that for a character to feel real, they sometimes have to look impossible. 🫪 When I originally drew this expression for Emoji Kitchen, I was building on this foundation. I wanted to show how faces are not merely defined by facial features but are also a material. Fast forward to the hyper-pop era, and the fabulous producer SOPHIE (RIP) 💿 revolutionized the visual of “plasticity.” In her Faceshopping music video, her own face is rendered as a hyper-realistic 3D model being stretched, hashed, and inflated.

Chronically Online: Why We Warp

Today, distortion isn’t just a mistake anymore, it’s become an emotional shorthand. Sometimes it’s even a high-status commentary on our relationship with screens, filters, and the "plasticity" of modern identity. Take the Fisheye PFP: if you’ve been on Discord or TikTok lately, you’ve seen the look—holding the phone inches from the face to create a bulbous, distorted nose 🤳. This “ugly-cute” distortion is a signal of authenticity, a deliberate rebellion against the airbrushed, hyper-perfect “Facetune” era.

But more importantly, distortion is a form of control. In an era of AI and beauty filters choosing to be "distorted" is a way to feel like you really own your own image and explore not just how you look but how you feel. While some swap “selfie-hacks” to circumvent lens distortion others simultaneously are setting their cameras to accentuate it. When I make myself look intentionally ‘off’, I can’t be judged for failing to look perfect because I’m deliberately dramatizing reality. 🫪

Note to self: My apartment craves a Convex Security Mirror.

Breaking the Reality Barrier

First came Melting Face 🫠, our collective surrender to the liquid state.

Then Dotted Line Face 🫥, the visual representation of sublimation: turning from a solid into a gas just to escape a conversation.

Now, we have Distorted Face (U+1FAEA), a moment defined by tension: where you aren’t just feeling an emotion — you are being physically altered by it.

Illustration is a gift because it affords us the ability to push beyond the physical world. Distorted Face emoji is the face of a silent, internal scream while scrolling this week’s headlines, or the psychic bloat of being crushed under the weight of AI. It captures the unearned confidence of being full of hot air, but also the precarious vulnerability of a single "rando" comment ruining your day. Whether it’s the memeification of a VP’s cheeks or the 0.5x selfie used to dodge the pressure of being ‘hot,’ we are all constantly inflating and deflating our digital selves. Distorted Face is the tiny reminder that sometimes, the only way to express how we feel is to stretch the truth until it’s unrecognizable. 🫪

There are 36 emoji containing hearts1 but nearly 4,000 emoji that aren’t hearts. Why settle for a Yellow Heart (💛) when you can use a Gold Medal (🥇) and shift the vibe from “I cherish our bond” to “We are a high-performing tactical unit”? If that feels cringe to you, then GOOD. It wasn’t FOR YOU ANYWAYS. “It actually only has to make sense to me for me to do it and I don’t feel like explaining it to anyone else”.

To whisper “I love you” in the age of skibidi, one must move past the “Frequently Used” tab and into the pantry that is our emoji picker. The Egg (🥚), the Broccoli (🥦), and the Pizza (🍕) can all say “I care about you,” in a way that may be indecipherable to most everyone on the planet but can mean everything to just you and someone you love.

The following is a very scientific field guide to creating your own seemingly absurd and deeply personal vocabulary of love. Note: Heart emoji remain perfectly acceptable for grandparents, tax accountants, colleagues, the general public regardless if you loooOOOOooOOoove them or not.

How to read this chart:
❤️ → 🫡
the cliché → new hotness

Tactical and Locked-In

Use this approach if you want to treat relationships like a high-functioning partnership or a special ops mission. It’s less about being mushy with your pookie and more about standing on business.

❤️→🫡

Respect / Loyal
Duty bound; “real recognizes real”

💛→🥇

Gold Standard
Top tier; “you’re number one”

🫶→🔗

Deep Connection
“Locked In” / Soulmates

😘→🫵

Direct Affection
“You. I choose you.”

♥️→🫀

Maintenance
My heart aches, literally

💑→🧲

Magnetic
Unavoidable, scientific attraction

💏→💥

Impact
The spark; when worlds collide

The Aura Economy: Post-Sincerity Status

In the Aura Economy, we no longer “have feelings”; we “accrue value.” To use a sparkling heart is to admit you are impressed. To use the Trending Upwards (📈) is to acknowledge that the vibe is currently peaking. This is about prestige, energy, and ensuring your social capital remains at an all-time high.

❤️‍🔥→🧨

Spicy aura
High intensity or “that’s on fire”

💖→🧸

Adorable Affection
Max aura, cute and precious

💓→📈

Growing Love
Aura is rising, getting more obsessed

🩶→🪨

Pure Aura
Solid, unshakeable, unbothered

❣️→⚡

High Energy
Sudden emphasis; high-voltage sincerity

The Mask: Plausible Deniability

The core of “brain rot” logic. By using mundane, boring, or inanimate objects, you shield yourself from the vulnerability of being perceived as “too thirsty”. Warning: You risk losing aura points if you hide your true feelings for too long.

🤍→🥚

Raw/Minimalist

I’m literally just an egg.

🤎→🥔

Solid/Earthy
Humble but real; grounded solidarity

🖤→🕳️

Vantablack
Lost in abyss of my heart

💝→🎀

Soft Aesthetic
Aesthetic over everything

🩷→🌷

Delicate
Soft pink and like a flower

🩵→🧊

Cold heart
You’re being cold; I’m just here for the chill

❣️→🧾

Exclamation of love
I’m keeping receipts

💘→🧎

Submission
Simp energy; on my knees

Similar but Different

Abstract hearts are replaced with the literal colors, animals, or movements they represent. It’s dry, visual, and I didn’t stutter. It’s a satellite dish. It requires no explanation.

💌→📡

Transmission
Beaming love directly into your brain

🥰→🔋

Affection Received
and I am energized

😍→😻

Obsession
Why use a face when we have a cat?

💙→🌊

Fluidity
We’re in the flow

🧡→🍊

Vibrant/Tangy
Orange but fruitier

💚→🥦

Organic
It’s green.

💕→⛲

Constant Flow
Overflowing; an infinite supply

💗→🌋

Pressure
About to erupt

💞→🔁

Reciprocity
Loop logic; “back at you”

💟→🪁

Lighthearted
Floating; high above the drama

The Effort is the Love

Finding your own emoji voice takes a certain kind of brave, weird confidence. It’s not surprising that this new landscape of “brain rot” and potatoes comes from the very real lived experience of teenagers. We spend our early years trying to fit in, embracing what works, discarding what doesn’t. Wanting to be perceived in one way but not another. Avoiding anything embarrassing at all costs. Rejecting the emoji habits of our elders is a right of passage and so is masking our interior lives because, as teens, we don’t always know how we really feel.

This desire to save face eventually yields into something much better: a signature. When done right, a loved one doesn’t need to ask why you sent them a Pizza (🍕) instead of a heart. They already know. The manual effort of scrolling past four thousand icons just to find that one specific, nonsensical object is the act of love. It’s the digital equivalent of a hand-written note in a world of form letters. What may have began as a way to stay emotionally safe while we navigate the rite of passage that is being a teenager eventually becomes the very thing that binds us.

I love hearing how each generation gets more comfortable with emoji and as a result more experimental with how they express themselves. All of this may seem crazy, but the universe was born from chaos. When the brainrot smoke clears, you are left with something far more durable than a generic symbol: a vocabulary that belongs only to the two of you. 📡

Once a year, Unicode drops its annual update: thousands of new characters, new scripts, new symbols, and of course… new emoji. Today marks the release of Unicode 17.0, adding 4,803 characters (bringing the grand total to 159,801!). You can download Noto Emoji today and embed on your website but they’re not quite ready to keyboard smash (it will take some time before many of these reach our devices) let’s take a moment to bask in the glow of …

Hairy Creature

Hairy creature is one of those rare emoji that feels both universal and oddly specific. From Yowie to Yeren, Mapinguari to Almasty, nearly every culture has a story about an elusive, shaggy being. It works as a stand-in for folklore, outsider status, or for those of us who are not a fan of shaving — hairy creature is the stuff of legends.

Distorted Face

A familiar face for those of you who use Google’s Emoji Kitchen. Distorted faces show up everywhere from ancient masks to manga panels and face filters. This emoji captures discomfort, cringe, and awkward humor AlL In A singLE gLancE.

Trombone

You hear it as soon as you see it. “Womp-womp-wooooomp” has entered the chat. It’s part jazz band pride, part wet blanket, part ska pants.

Orca

The orca is an icon. Revered in Indigenous cultures and beloved in pop culture. As apex predators they carry the weight of power and their complex social lives and hunting strategies make them a symbol of intelligence make them a powerful symbol for so much more.

Treasure Chest

The treasure chest is timeless: pirates, folklore, video games, even finance apps. It represents discovery, reward, and value—literal or metaphorical. As an emoji, it’s flexible enough for gaming victories, lost-and-found moments, or celebrating personal wins.

Falling Debris

From literal rubble (landslides/avalanches) to metaphorical collapse (political scandals) the flexibility of this emoji is its strength. Use it in serious moments of natural disaster coverage or use it dramatically when everything feels like it’s falling apart.

Fight Cloud

Shorthand for conflict, be it heated debates, sports rivalries, or playful sibling squabbles. As an emoji, it has both a serious and humorous side: It offers itself up as an escalation when the moment calls for it but also can also illustrate the silliness of it all when miscommunication is bringing the drama.

But wait there’s more.

These friends warrant a dedicated story time of their own so consider this a teaser for next week’s bloggy letter. For years, some emoji just didn’t support tones. To fix this, the Emoji Standard and Research Working Group had to revisit how these sequences were structured, update the rules for gender and tone application, and add entirely new ZWJ combinations.

(If you want to dive deeper into this topic, check out an earlier post on adding multi-toned handshakes to our keyboards.)

This update brings a long-awaited fix: every emoji with exposed skin can now accept a tone, a first since the feature was introduced in 2015. This creates a consistent system, providing a stable foundation for future emoji keyboards to offer more personalized and intuitive experiences.

When can you get these new emoji?

A simple question that deserves a simple answer. Alas, you’re dealing with the internet so the answer is complex. One of the many reasons why emoji are so popular is because they “just work” e v e r y w h e r e and real human effort goes into making this happen, which takes time. So, don’t expect to see these characters anytime soon. A fresh batch of emoji (fingerprint, harp, barren tree, etc.) just landed on your device earlier this year. They’re still new! Go play with them!! 🫩🫆🪾🫜🪉🪏🫟

And before you know it, hairy creature will be entering the group chat. 🫈

Want to help?
Unicode’s mission is to ensure everyone can communicate in their languages across all devices. With the Holidays around the corner consider adopting a character as a gift or making a donation. Unicode, Inc. is a US-based open source, open standards, non-profit, 501(c)3 organization, your contribution may be eligible for a tax deduction. Please consult with a tax advisor for details. 😘

Update 9/10/25: Timeline has been updated to remove Northern Hemisphere seasonal time markers.

You’ve seen things, saluting face emoji. Things people wouldn’t believe. Elon taking over our favorite bird app 🫡💙. Unicode adding beans 🫘 to our keyboards. Cringe Tiktoks 🫡. Group texts about dinner reservations 🫡. You remain unflinching, dedicated to the cause — present and reporting for duty.

Saluting emoji 🫡 is all about showing up. It's a way to say: I'm here. I heard you. I got this. It can be sincere or sarcastic, funny or solemn. It communicates agreement, recognition, and sometimes farewell with a single raised hand and a straight face.

So... Why Do We Salute, Anyway? (｀∇´ゞ

The internet is full of half-true histories about the hand-head salute gesture. An invention of the Roman Republic? Cute, but unlikely. Knights lifting visors? Dubious. Is it related to tipping one’s hat to say hello or raising your right hand to show you’re unarmed? Possibly???? The origin of how or why we began to salute is the stuff legends are made of (mostly because every article online cites a Wikipedia page riddled with ^{[citation needed].})

While we may never know why or how we first started saluting one thing is for sure: the gesture’s intent is to indicate that you’re not hostile. Guess what else we do to communicate we are not threatening and friendly? That's right, laughter 😂 which also happens to be the most popular emoji by a large margin.

Different Salutes, One Emoji

A salute emoji might seem like an obvious addition to the Unicode Standard — but in practice, it’s complicated. While the act of gesturing is universal their specific forms are deeply cultural. What looks respectful in one country might be very awkward in another. A face-hand salute is no different and I’m not trying to get court-marshaled here.

Military salutes vary not just by country but also by branch. In the British Royal Navy, the palm faces out. In India, the hand is vertical, palm inward. In the U.S. and much of Europe, it’s palm-down, fingers tight. Some styles touch the forehead, others the temple or eyebrow. Each version says the same thing — just in a different accent ;-)

To capture a gesture that transcends borders, branches, and contexts, this design is a diplomat. Rather than copying one military style, the proposal offered a hybrid: a gesture that feels like a salute without strictly belonging to any single tradition. It’s a flexible, gestural sketch — the idea of an salute, a nod to many customs without impersonating any of them. It helps it stay relevant and useful across dozens of platforms and billions of users worldwide.

And then, there’s Apple’s design. One of many interpretations based on the Unicode framework.

NGL. Apple’s take is extremely funny. The forefinger just above the eye, palm turned at a 45 degree angle, all fingers rigid. It’s tidy. Formal. Very... Serious. Who ever drew this was clearly taking orders from someone who used to serve in the U.S. military or watched a lot of boot camp movies.

In many ways, this uptight and self-serious take is the reason it is so fun to subvert. It’s something you can dress up and down for any occasion. And, like any true American hero it required great sacrifice: to fit that perfectly proper military salute into a standard neatly confined square space, half the face would have to be eradicated.

Farewell, left side face, you served us well 🫡

(￣^￣)ゞ

If emoji are emotional punctuation, saluting face is periodT. Be it used in formal occasions ("Thank you for your service 🫡"), on the daily ("Got it, will do 🫡"), or when flirting ("My Roman Empire is soup 🫡🍲"), saluting face emoji does it all. A little goofy. A little respectful. The perfect emoji for an era full of paradoxes — when you feel everything and nothing at once.

Today, the Unicode Consortium has officially opened 2025’s window for emoji proposals. Are you ready to submit an idea? Incredible. The world is obviously suffering from a severe emoji shortage and your concept — a paper bag —is the missing piece of the puzzle 🧩

Every year, a substantial amount of documents are submitted but only a select few make the cut. And yet, you remain undeterred. The odds are stacked against you, but you’re all in. I see you. I respect the hustle. 💪

In the past, tips, tricks, and pointers have been offered to help us craft the perfect emoji proposal. But this year? Let’s take a different approach. Let’s write a proposal so aggressively terrible it’ll call for the end of emoji altogether. 💀😎👻😜😈

1. Pick an Emoji Idea That Has No Symbolic Meaning ⚗️

If your emoji idea is visually iconic, has symbolic, metaphorical, and multiple meanings beyond literally representing itself, congratulations! You’ve already failed at failing. Instead, aim for something absurdly specific.

• “Yellow apple” emoji (Granny apples are sour 🍏 and red apples are mealy 🍎)

• “Hair dryer” (hellloooo grwm 🪞🪮💁)

• “A second identical taco” emoji 🌮🌮 (Just typing it twice is too much work)

2. Ignore the Submission Guidelines 🙉

Unicode has a detailed submission requirements. Why follow instructions when you can go off script?

• Leave out critical sections like “expected frequency of use” and “factors for exclusion” and replace with anecdotal screenshots from social media.

• Propose an emoji from an excluded category.

• Circulate a change.org petition instead of filling out this form and attaching a pdf.

• Set your document to “private” so no one can read it 🫣

3. Propose an Emoji That is Already Representable 🤡

Submitting a request for something that’s already an emoji or similar to what already exists is one way to spend your time, I guess.

• New ROFL Emoji 🤣 (but tilted the other direction)

• Squirrel 🐿️ (Everyone knows they are not the same as a chipmunk!)

• Traffic Cone (W⚠️A🦺R⛑️N👷🏻IN🚧G🏗)

• Garbage Fire 🗑️🔥 (Everything is not fine)

4. Design Something That’s Not Legible at Emoji Sizes 👀

Want to watch designers cry? Suggest an emoji that simply is not visually disctinctive at emoji scale, like:

• “Toothpick” (Might as well ask people to search for a needle in a haystack)

• “Pillow” (Or, is that a piece of gum?)

• “Concrete” emoji (No defining features unless it’s part of a specific structure)

5. Base Your Proposal on a New Fad or Current Event 📰

To ensure your emoji is outdated before it’s even approved, consider proposing something inspired by a current event, meme, or viral moment. (Note: The entire process can sometimes take as long as two years! And, once an emoji is added to the Unicode Standard, it is never removed 🌠)

• Baby Yoda (Not to mention copyright problems)

• The Doge emoji (wow, such rejection, very failure)

• Elbow Bump (See also: Footshakes)

6. Don’t Back Your Proposal with Evidence 📊

Forget actual justifications — just vibe your way through the submission process with anecdotal evidence and little to no sources. Try lines like:

• "Hey Nerds. This emoji is very important for reasons that should be obvious."

• "This emoji is deeply important to lovers of (insert cute animal)."

• "Everyone will definitely use this, here are some obscure puns."

• “We have four mailbox emoji surely we can add one database emoji.”

• “Without this emoji, civilization may collapse.” 😱

And there you have it — the definitive guide to what not to do when drafting an emoji proposal. When every idea has merit it’s hard to know where to start or stop but hopefully now you’re now ready to write the best emoji proposal ever!!!!! Good luck and happy emoji-ing! ✨🤸🕳️✨

Much like how Jesus wasn’t born on December 25th (aka Christmas), emoji aren’t actually born on July 17th 📅 (aka World Emoji Day). There might be some false labor pains in July, but emoji don’t officially arrive until September when the Unicode Consortium delivers the Unicode Standard. So, happy birthday, Unicode 16.0! This update includes 5,185 new characters: seven emoji, 3,995 Egyptian hieroglyphs, seven new scripts, and over 700 symbols from legacy computing environments. Turns out emoji are Virgos, not Leos, and that explains a lot! 😜

But what’s the deal? Unicode 16.0 has been delivered, giving us the tools to digitize languages, emoji and these awesome new legacy computer symbols but why can’t I use them right now?? GIMMIE. I WANNA MAKE MY PLAIN-TEXT FILES CUTE.

Like all newborns, it takes time for emoji to become more than just Instagram content. Unicode first needed to be developed (Beta = in the womb) and today is just day one. It takes even longer for characters to grow up (Publicly released = move out and live on it’s own).

In a word: it’s all about support. There are four layers of it: 

• Font support

• Operating system support

• Application support

• Keyboard support1

So let’s take a look at what has to happen next so we can pepper our texts with the latest and greatest that Unicode has to offer.

1. Font Support

To display new emoji, they need to be designed. (I can’t tell you how many people have said to me: “It never occurred to me that someone designs emoji …”😂). Font creators must update their fonts or create new ones to include these new characters. Fortunately, designers don’t have to start from scratch because Unicode provides reference imagery.

Note: You are now entering an abbreviated version of “How to design Noto Emoji”:

1. Read the emoji proposal and look at unicode’s reference icon

2. Consider its purpose in a communication context

3. Do additional research (Confer with experts on the subject when necessary)

4. Evaluate how it works with other existing emoji (To ensure distinctiveness)

5. Anticipate how other fonts will design it (For x-platform consistency)

It’s clear that the leafless tree is a symbol with great range including: devastating droughts, spooky scary halloween, the changing of seasons, and in general represents dying, decay and disease. With all of this in mind, the final “leafless tree” design gives a nod to the existing tree emoji 🌳 as it reveals what is under all those leaves.

2. Operating System Updates

Once the font is designed and compiled it’s time for our operating systems (Android, Windows, iOS, etc.) to do what they need to do display Unicode 16.0. This includes not only font updates but also changes in text rendering systems to ensure the character is recognized and processed correctly. In order to roll out across — well, the entire internet — it takes a loooooooong time so don’t expect to have Emoji 16.0 working across your entire device until early next year.

I’ve already written about when Emoji 16.0 is scheduled to roll out. But, as a reminder, keep a look out for them on your devices early next year. In the meantime, consider finding an excuse to use this year’s latest additions: 🙂‍↔️ Head Shaking Horizontally 🙂‍↕️ Head Shaking Vertically 🐦‍🔥 Phoenix 🍋‍🟩 Lime 🍄‍🟫 Brown Mushroom ⛓️‍💥 Broken Chain

3. Application Support (Apps, Web and Text/Code Editors)

Let’s talk about apps. Some developers have taken emoji into their own hands and don’t rely on the operating system to render emoji (I’m looking at you WhatsApp, Discord, FBM …). This puts these messaging apps in a position where they are responsible for ensuring compatibility as new versions of the Unicode Standard are released. As different operating systems and apps adopt emoji updates at different rates (let’s call it emoji puberty), your notifications might display a picture of a barren tree, while these messaging apps show a box. It’s awkward, but it happens every year.

I could get really nerdy and explain how there are IMO (too) many font standards and as a result one emoji font doesn’t just “work everywhere” and now every operating system and some apps have their own unique flavor … but I won’t. Not today.

4. Input

It may seem surprising to think of keyboards as 'optional' when it comes to Unicode updates, but the reality is that with over 154,998 characters, not all of them have an easy way to be typed and yet they are capable if displaying on our screens :( Remember those new magnificent Legacy Computing Symbols I mentioned earlier? They are WONDERFUL and yet … unlikely to appear in your keyboards anytime soon. :( :( :(

While it may seem that keyboards should get updated with the rest of your operating system, in reality keyboards update more like an app. Keyboards also don’t just render code points additionally they have to determine where the emoji live, set up keywords, and assign short-codes (like using :leafless-tree: to call up the leafless tree emoji). Once this is defined and integrated the emoji fall in place and are triggered while you type — a feature called predictive text. And let’s be real: with 3,782 emoji to choose from, who has time to scroll through the entire list? Bless you, emoji prediction and suggestion <3

A Present for You

It can be frustrating that something so simple doesn’t 'just happen.' Often, you need to manually update your devices, apps, or fonts to access new characters. But, as a reward for making it to the end of this bloggy letter I’m going to let you in on a surprise: you don’t have to wait until 2025 to start enjoying Unicode 16.0 right away. The first level of support exists today — Noto Color Emoji and Noto Emoji are both available on our website. Think of it as an early birthday gift. While emoji won’t “just work everywhere”2 yet, you can embed Noto Color Emoji as a font on your website or use Noto Emoji to do some laser cutting.

While emoji may seem like tiny, simple images they undergo a complex process before they appear on our devices. Every year the Unicode Technical Committee publishes and specify the rules, algorithms, and properties necessary to achieve interoperability between different platforms and languages. But after that, it’s in designers and developers’ hands to take it from there. It’s true what they say that it takes a village to raise a child. 😉 And, before you know it they’re all grown up and you’re having more babies. Wait. What???

xo,
jd

She’s confident.

She’s mindful.

She’s cutesy.

I am of course talking about … little brown mushroom 🍄‍🟫.

Little brown mushroom 🍄‍🟫 doesn’t roll into your keyboard tripping on her hypersensitive awareness of time and space. She doesn’t look like a clown with a red cap covered in polka dots. She is presentable. She minds her business foraging in the woods without having visual and auditory hallucinogens. She is … very demure. She is the newest edible included in the Unicode Standard sitting in the “Food and Drink“ section of your emoji keyboards.

Don’t worry, brown mushroom did not replace our favorite black-light dorm poster shroom and Mario power up. Now, we have two mushrooms (🍄🍄‍🟫). Due to her adorable fairy home symbolism 🧚🍄 and toxic association 🍄☠️ (though death from ingestion is very rare) the fly agaric toadstool amanita muscaria is thriving in “Animals and Nature” alongside all the flowers and shrubs.

She’s a legend 🍄

It is impossible to talk about the new brown mushroom without mentioning the amanita muscaraia which seems to have hypnotized us (it is a hallucinogenic). It’s in fairy-inspired crafts, in murals, in fashion . It’s in Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights. Who could forget the dancing mushroom sequence in Fantasia? Smurfs lived in them 🍄! Our red-capped polka dot adorned mushroom is simply iconic, capable of conveying everything from whimsy, enchantment, “super powers” and an altered state of mind. All of this sounds fun until you realize amanita muscarias also causes nausea, salivation, tremors, vomiting and diarrhea.

Making you a mindful salad: 🥬🥕🧅🌽🧄🌶🍄‍🟫🔪 🥣

Preparing a (achem) very brazen salad: 🥬🥕🧅🌽🧄🌶🍄🔪 🥣

As Old as Dirt

While the red-capped mushroom continues to dominate pop-culture, the depiction of mushrooms in art goes back as far as 40,000 years ago according to forager Angel Schatz. For thousands of years and all around the globe humans have depicted mushrooms in cave drawings, petroglyphs, mushroom stones, and in Renaissance paintings. They held a place of great status (likely due to their psychedelic and medicinal properties). A variety of ancient Egyptian texts hypothesis that the different stages of the Egyptian crown designated different stages of psychedelic mushrooms.

But when did people start eating mushrooms not to see god but simply as food? Peter Jordan writes in his Field Guide to Edible Mushrooms of Britain and Europe that, “Food tasters were employed by Roman emperors to ensure that mushrooms were safe to eat.” But, mycophagy dates much further back. Edible mushroom species have been found in association with 13,000-year-old archaeological sites in Chile and there is evidence that mushrooms were used as human food in prehistoric Europe after discovering a bowl of mushrooms near Nola in Italy.

In contemporary times, you will also discover some sautéed mushrooms, onions, garlic, kale, and mozzarella in my belly after pizza night. 🤪

And this is precisely why the inclusion of the brown mushroom is so elegant. She’s not trying to replace our favorite red-capped shroom. She offers us a world of earthy simplicity beyond her companion’s fairyland legacy. She is an unassuming candidate representing the world of fungi without having to encode each variety of myceliums, morels, porcinis, truffles, and champignons. Little brown mushroom emoji is here for all your grocery store text messages, nature walk captions, culinary videos, and cottage core vibes. She’s not doing crazy, she’s not doing too much. Little brown mushroom is *demure*.

It’s July 4th. For many Americans it means maybe they get the day off work, hang out with some friends or family, BBQ a bit, and enjoy a fireworks show.

For me, It means making some ASCII-Emoji art.

I’ve turned this into a bit of a Independence Day tradition on Twitter (RIP). Every year, I post a new version of the American Flag. It’s simple structure serves as a perfect canvas for commentary. A week after the first Presidential debates has me feeling …

🌀😳🌀😵‍💫🌀🫨🌀🤔🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
🥴🌀🫤🌀😣🌀😔🌀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
🌀😖🌀🫣🌀😮‍💨🌀😠🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
☹️🌀😵🌀😒🌀😫🌀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Looking back on this series² (if you can call it a series), each design is a reaction to the events happening at that point in time. At first, when I scrolled back to 2023 it took me a second to remember what it was referencing but everything came crashing back: the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions:

🎓🤑🎓🤑🎓🤑🎓🤑📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕
🤑🎓🤑🎓🤑🎓🤑🎓🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛
🎓🤑🎓🤑🎓🤑🎓🤑📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕
🤑🎓🤑🎓🤑🎓🤑🎓🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛
📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕
🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛🥛
📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕📕

I guess 2022 wasn’t so great either:

😵‍💫🫂🤒🫂😰🫂😵🫂❌❓❌❗❌❓❌❗
🫂😶‍🌫️🫂😩🫂😭🫂😕🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️
😩🫂😨🫂😷🫂😓🫂🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
🫂😱🫂😮‍💨🫂😫🫂😧🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️
🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨
🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️🌪️
🆘🆘🆘🆘🆘🆘🆘🆘🆘🆘🆘🆘🆘🆘🆘🆘

2021 … what else. COVID.

😵‍💫🦠🤒🦠😰🦠😵🦠❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹
🦠😶‍🌫️🦠😩🦠😭🦠😕💉💉💉💉💉💉💉💉
😩🦠😨🦠😷🦠😓🦠❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹
🦠😱🦠😮‍💨🦠😫🦠😥💉💉💉💉💉💉💉💉
❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹
💉💉💉💉💉💉💉💉💉💉💉💉💉💉💉💉
❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹❤️‍🩹

The Summer of 2020, our streets filled with protests:

❤️🖤❤️🖤❤️🖤❤️🖤✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿
🖤❤️🖤❤️🖤❤️🖤❤️✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽
❤️🖤❤️🖤❤️🖤❤️🖤✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻
🖤❤️🖤❤️🖤❤️🖤❤️✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿
✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽✊🏽
✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻✊🏻
✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿✊🏿

2019, living in a police state:

👮⭐👮⭐👮⭐👮⭐🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨
⭐👮⭐👮⭐👮⭐👮👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️
👮⭐👮⭐👮⭐👮⭐🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨
⭐👮⭐👮⭐👮⭐👮👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️
🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨
👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️👁️
🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨

Remember in 2018 when I removed the egg from the salad emoji in and Piers Morgan had a tantrum? (This is a very niche current event, lol)

🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅
🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚
🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅
🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥗🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚
🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅
🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚🥚
🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅

And, of course 2017 brought us the first year of Trump’s presidency.

😶🆗😑🆗😔🆗😕🆗❓❗❓❗❓❗❗
🆗🙁🆗😬🆗😟🆗😕👀👀👀👀👀👀👀
😖🆗😦🆗😧🆗😳🆗❓❗❓❗❓❗❗
🆗😲🆗😩🆗😵🆗😧👀👀👀👀👀👀👀
❓❗❓❗❓❗❓ ❓❗❓❗❓❗❓❓
👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀
❓❗❓❗❓❗❓ ❓❗❓❗❓❗❓❗

Ok, some are better than others 🤪

What is Old is new Again

There’s a long history of making pictures with punctuation tracing back to 1867’s typewriter art which I’ve borrowed from heavily contemporarily with letterpress drawings and ASCII illustrations. I miss Joe Sondow’s emoji bots on Twitter (RIP) but Joan Stark’s ASCII work from the 90’s continues to thrive:

                ___
               /` ,-\      _ ___
               \_(==0>    |-|   |._
        ___     )_ _/     | |   |  |
       [___]   /  `\____  | |   |_.'
       |  ^|  /  \_____/) |-|___|
       |   | /    /   _:::_))_(___
       |   |/'-._/_   |___________|
       '-;_|\_____ `\ ||"""""""""||
         | `######|_|_||         ||
         \ ._  _,'{~-_}|         ||
         _)   (   {-__}|         ||
    jgs /______`\ |_,__)         ||

It starts with someone creative enough to think that a curly bracket and some slashes look like bunny ears {\__/} but it only starts there. One of the reasons why ASCII memes are incredibly powerful is because anyone can tell stories with them. What may start as a cute drawing to ask for more kisses (aka “you want this bunny”)…

{\__/}
( • . •)
/ > ❤️ u want this?

{\__/}⠀
( • _•) ⠀
❤️< \⠀ give me kisses first >:(

… RAPIDLY evolves beyond it’s original conception due to the nature of how easy it is to manipulate. Replace the heart emoji with a new one and change the text and it becomes:

{\__/}
( • . •)
/ > 🌎 u want this?

{\__/}⠀
( • _•) ⠀
🌎< \⠀ abolish fossil fuels

I love this one from Jonny Son who added some more punctuation to create new characters and make it less with-holding ;-)

{\__/}
( • . •)
/ > 🏈 u want this?

{\__/}⠀ ⠀⠀{\__/}
( • ᴗ•) ⠀⠀(• . • )
/ > >⠀⠀⠀🏈< \

{\__/} ⠀⠀⠀⠀ {\__/}
( • ᴗ•) ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀(•ᴗ • )
/ > 🏈 ⠀⠀⠀⠀ < < \

{\__/} ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ {\__/}
( • ᴗ•) ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀(•ᴗ • )
/ > > ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ 🏈 < \

Make your own!

Just like you don’t have to be a linguist to invent slang you don’t have to know how to be a professional designer to create memes. One of the pleasures of emoji looking like pictures but operating like letters is that we don’t need any fancy editing software or GenAI to be creative and say something new.

{\__/}
( • . •)
/ > 💌 u want this?

{\__/}⠀
( • _•) ⠀
💌< \⠀ SMASH SUBSCRIBE

— jd

¹ DYK That Betsy Ross didn’t design the second American Flag? It’s true. Don’t hesitate using this fun fact at today’s BBQ.

² Some of the flag-art in this newsletter have been modified from their original designs because … I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT :)

There are exactly two countries in the world that have no official National Day: the United Kingdom and Denmark. There's an old joke about this, that the United Kingdom doesn't need its own national day because it's indirectly responsible for so many other countries' national independence days 😂😂😂. In that spirit I suppose we also have them to thank for a new emoji in our keyboards: the broken chain ⛓️‍💥⛓️‍💥⛓️‍💥

The first thing people associate with this emoji is literal, physical shackles. These are the ones broken despite a system that binds us. Dating back to ancient history (metal chains have been in use since 225 B.C.) broken chains are used globally to commemorate Emancipation Days, Abolition Days, and Independence Days. As of March 2024, broken chain emoji (and a few others 🐦‍🔥🙂‍↕️🙂‍↔️🍋‍🟩🍄‍🟫) began popping up in Android and iOS environments thanks to the Unicode Standard.

But chains are not always physical. They can be the limitations we set on ourselves, the stereotypes others place on us, the assumptions that society makes about us. We break shackles that are symbolic, systemic, and personal — they are as real as any physical chains.

Broken chains are used to reference everything from military procedure (as in: “don’t break rank”), in poetry, inspirational posters, slang (as in: extremely good), protest signs and yes even in proverbs (We’ve all met *that* team captain keen to quote, “You’re only as strong as your weakest link”.) A search for “freedom” in Google Images suggests broken chains are a familiar metaphor for freedom. Even Gemini and Chat GPT can agree that “one of the the three most common symbols for freedom” includes “broken chain”.

And here-in lies the strength of this emoji: it is ubiquitous and contains multitudes. It doesn’t have to collect dust in your emoji junk drawer because it illustrates common, complicated, abstract concepts we all wrestle with at some point in our life:

• Your origins (⛓️‍💥 = snapped bonds)

• Strength (⛓️‍💥 = release, both mentally and physically)

• Relationships (⛓️‍💥 = end of a friendship)

• Oppression (⛓️‍💥 = freedom)

• Shared Destiny (⛓️‍💥 = breaking a cycle)

• Interconnectivity (⛓️‍💥 = disconnected)

Perhaps I’m a bit of a romantic for thinking that a broken chain emoji ⛓️‍💥 reminds us that each broken link is a struggle turned victory. Much love to all of you fighting the good fight for today and future generations. For the rest of you breaking chain letters or linking to dead blogs … this one is for you too ⛓️‍💥

This article been updated to include the new emoji included in the Unicode 15.1 release.

It’s that time of year. For some of us that means the birds are chirping and the weather is getting warmer 🐦🌱. For others, the leaves are changing color and you’re unpacking your coats 🧥🍂. No matter where you are in the world, you can submit an emoji proposal starting April 2, 2024 and The Unicode Consortium is looking forward to receiving your submissions. 👀

Whether you’re new to the process or a veteran contributor to the Unicode Standard please take note: a few changes have been made to the guidelines. So, as you prepare your documents, consider the following steps to ensure your work meets all the requirements to be considered.

Step 1: See if it’s already been approved or “under consideration” ✅
It seems obvious but if it’s already an emoji (or if we’ve reviewed a similar proposal) your job is done! Scan the list of Emoji Requests and see whether your proposed emoji has previously been submitted.

Emoji that are listed as “Prioritization Pending” or “Under Consideration” do not require additional proposals and emoji declined within the last four years are not eligible for re-review.⏳

Step 2: Familiarize yourself with Criteria for Inclusion 🫂
We recommend reading recently successful proposals. It may also be worth your time scrolling through the Emoji Submission FAQ, which includes common questions and answers. 🆕 A full list of the types that will not be reviewed can be found here.

🔥 Hot Tip: We’re hosting a webinar on April 16 with tips on “How to make your emoji proposal the best that it can be”. It’s free and you can register here.

Step 3: Prepare your proposal document 📝
Don’t skip any of the fields in the form. Completing the Guidelines for Submitting Unicode® Emoji Proposals is critical. Your document must contain all of the sections shown in this format, provide empirical evidence, and address all of the questions specified there as completely as possible. Take special note of the Selection Factors and the Emoji FAQ. Review your proposal document to confirm it is complete, has all of the necessary frequency citations, the images are not copyrighted, and meets all of the selection factors.

🔥 Hot Tip: The ESC has updated the required sources for frequency data. Previously Google & Bing statistics were accepted but recently removed a mechanism that quantified the queries. Moving forward, submissions should quote Google Books and Google Ngram Viewer stats.

Step 4: Submit your documents 📨
If you have gotten this far, congratulations. You’re almost done and the ESC’s work has just begun 🤯

Submit your proposal as a PDF with reference images using the Unicode Emoji Submission Form. Your complete submission will be made up of the completed form, which includes acceptance of the Emoji Proposal Agreement & License, and your proposal PDF.

🔥 Hot Tip: You no longer have to include images separately from the proposal PDF. All images can be contained within your PDF.

That’s it. After you submit you’ll be notified by November 30th if your document has moved on to the next stage for consideration. However, if your proposal is declined or not advanced I know it will come as a disappointment. 💕 For what it’s worth, there are loads of reasons why proposals are declined, including but not limited to: 

➕ It can already be represented by a sequence. (Ex. Garbage fire 🗑️🔥)

🔍 It’s too specific. We can’t add every type of flower, every hairstyle, every color of drink, every breed of animal no matter how cute they are ;-)

💰 Very few are selected. Very few.

🐣 It's a transient concept. Think more, “Stable, long-standing concepts” and less “memes”.

❌ Many other factors for exclusion.

Reconciling the rapid, transient nature of modern communication with the formal, methodical process required by a standards body like the Unicode Consortium is the name of the game these days. Until we can send any image in the world alongside text messages and not just code points …. well, Unicode is here for the world’s emoji related needs. 💖

Good luck and happy emoji-ing! ✨😃🔎✍️✨

What do a leafless tree, a fingerprint, and a harp have in common? 

This is not a set up to a riddle. This is Emoji 16.0. 

This week, the Unicode Technical Committee gathered for our last meeting of 2023 to discuss the encoding, data files, and list of characters related to digitizing the world’s languages. Amongst the topics discussed were emoji and as a result seven new characters are on their way for inclusion into the Unicode Standard, into your keyboards, and into your hearts ;-)

An incredibly powerful aspect of written language is that it consists of a finite number of characters that can “do it all”. And yet, as the emoji ecosystem has matured over time our keyboards have ballooned and emoji categories are about to hit — or have hit — a level of saturation. Upon reflecting on how emoji are used, the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee (ESC) has entered a new era where the primary way for emoji to move forward is not merely to add more of them to the Unicode Standard, but to consider how the ones added provide the most linguistic flexibility. As a result, the ESC approves fewer and fewer emoji proposals every year.

The few that are added this year have demonstrated their adaptability in different contexts — take for example, fingerprint. Fingerprints are a symbol of identity (unique as you), security (as a passkey), and forensics (what crime show logo is complete without a fingerprint?). While we think of fingerprints as a relatively modern phenomenon according to Forensics Digest, the earliest use of fingerprints dates back to 1000 B.C.

In fact all of this year’s emoji candidates have deep roots in history. Harps have been known since antiquity in Asia, Africa, and Europe, dating back at least as early as 3000 BCE. Today it has political, sporting, corporate, and religious symbolism 👼 Harp isn’t even the oldest concept represented in this release — Leafless trees have been around for roughly 420 million years 🤣. The Leafless tree can literally represent droughts or winter and metaphorically indicate a state of barrenness and death.

Shovel isn’t just another noun — sure, yes, it’s a tool commonly found in your shed — in our keyboards, however, it’s also a verb. Digging yourself out of a hole, digging yourself into a hole, shoveling 💩, it does it all. But wait, there’s more. Splatter is one of those stealth emoji that when you look at you might be thinking, “really, another sex emoji?” (To be honest, show me someone who doesn’t think an emoji is a sex emoji and I’ll show you someone who lacks imagination). Splatter is a spill. Splatter is expressive. Splatter is the ultimate soft emoji —  a perfect counterpoint to collision 💥 the sharpest of sharp shapes. One might even say, splatter is the bouba to collision’s kiki.

When can you get these new emoji?

A simple question that deserves a simple answer. Alas, you’re dealing with Unicode so the answer is complex. Did you know it can take up to two years to encode an emoji? It’s true. If we want the symbols we digitize to truly “just work” across the entirety of not just the Internet but all digital surfaces … it takes time. So, don’t expect to see these characters anytime soon. In fact, despite the previous batch of emoji (phoenix, lime, broken chain, etc.) getting approved last year they still haven’t landed on your device of choice yet but are well on their way to pop up by Spring 2024. 

So, until then, enjoy your new 2023 emoji (Looking at you 🩷), brace yourself for 2024 (Phoenix here we come), and know that 2025’s Splatter will catch up with us soon.

Want to help?
Unicode’s mission is to ensure everyone can communicate in their languages across all devices. With the Holidays around the corner consider adopting a character as a gift or making a donation. Unicode, Inc. is a US-based open source, open standards, non-profit, 501(c)3 organization, your contribution may be eligible for a tax deduction. Please consult with a tax advisor for details. 😘

Back in my day if you wanted to text “LOL” you had to smash the “5” on your phone’s number pad three times, then “6” three times, and “5” three more times (IYKYK). Needless to say the way we texted was dramatically impacted by the mechanics of typing. Fortunately, twenty years later our phones look and operate more like tiny pocket computers and we have full keyboards at our fingertips that make it easy to shift between letters, punctation, and emoji too.

And yet … the experience using emoji has largely remained unchanged over the past decade. There is no way to swiftly change the appearance of an emoji’s color or gender presentation the way we effortlessly shift between capitalizing a letter or lowercasing another. This is painful, slow and frustrating. I just typed “💪🏿💪🏾💪🏽💪🏼💪🏻” and it felt like it took days to compose. 

In most emoji keyboards, it takes over 300 taps to set the tone and gender of every individual compatible emoji. And more taps again whenever you need to express yourself, because no single emoji represents how you care to present yourself all the time. That’s why we’re making it easier to change your emoji’s skin tone and gender with just one tap: adjust one and this preference will be applied to every other compatible emoji across your keyboard. Give it a try in Gboard rolling out on Android today. 

Emoji are just as fluid as language and identity

We made it easier to switch between skin tone and gender expression on emoji after researching how people use them - and how they often switch between different variations. A recent Google study of 2,000 participants, balanced across users of the five emoji skin tones, found being able to use skin-toned emoji creates a sense of connection, pride and representation. But study participants reported being very careful about when they use emoji tones. For example, we’re far more likely to use a skin-toned emoji in a private group chat with our close friends than when posting to a public message board full of strangers. Critically, being able to turn off tones is just as important as the ability to use them in the first place.

Also, we don’t always stick with the same tone or gender presentation. On average, 73% of participants report picking the same tone every time for self-representation, while 24% regularly swap between two tones. This is usually a color adjacent to their most commonly-used one, but many people report using multiple tones because of changes to their skin tone due to sun, or to align more closely with the skin tones of the audience they are engaging with.

Whether we use emoji skin tones is often related to the situation (e.g. at work vs chatting with family), but people are also reluctant to use these emoji to refer to other people. Many people feel it would be rude to “impose” a skin tone on someone else, especially someone they are not close to. They really are a deeply personal expression of identity.

In the same way we carefully pick our words when sending a formal email 👍🏽 or flirty text 🫶🏿, selecting our skin tone or gender is fluid. By providing faster access to the kind of emoji we need when we need it, our keyboards become a rich canvas for expression. 🫴🏾✨💖

Special thanks to Dr. Alexander Robertson for inspiring, researching, and writing this issue of “Did Someone Say Emoji"?” Read more about his work on the topic of emoji and representation.

Last year, the Noto Emoji project launched over one-hundred animations of the most frequently used emoji like tears of joy, heart eyes, and pile of poo; however, because I didn’t blog about it on the ole bloggy letter did it really happen?

WELLLLLLLL YES. IT DID HAPPEN. Not only that, but over a hundred more have been made and they are ADORABLE lalksdjfalksjdflkasjdflasdf. LOOK AT THIS GOAT.

Editor’s Note: Full disclosure, when not volunteering my time with the Unicode Consortium you can find me, along with some other nerds, developing Noto Emoji.

Beyond SMS Text Messaging

Nostalgia is a drug so I’ll try to refrain from waxing poetic about the emoji of the 90’s and their radical exuberance, innocent simplicity, and how they DANCED …

That’s right. Many of the original characters on Japanese phones animated. Behold the dancer emoji via phone operator KDDI 👇👇

Go get it, KDDI dancer.

As we move beyond plain text communications to rich immersive ones — like live streaming and video conferencing — emoji continue to demonstrate their relevance as an affordance to backchannel with others🎙️. Just as a head nod or jotting of notes gives speakers some assurance they’ve said something worth remembering, a heart emoji or a rofl acknowledge that whatever you said was appreciated ❤️ These emotional connections are a big part of how we show empathy and build relationships 🥲

With the added value of animation — which can be very effective at emphasizing emotions — we have a compelling recipe for emoji to kick it up a notch and evolve with the internet of the future. Language doesn’t stand still and emoji don’t have to either.

But there’s a catch.

If an emoji can jiggle wiggle does it mean it should jiggle wiggle?

Emoji are intended to represent a broad number of purposes. For example, falling leaves (🍂) can be used literally (falling leaves) but also figuratively (Autumn). Emoji are also used in deeply obscure and personal ways (show me an emoji that isn’t about sex and I’ll show you someone who lacks an imagination). So, how do we ensure that animated equivalents don’t result in unintentionally changing their communicative function?

It turns out dancing emoji don’t have the autonomy that you might expect. (OK OK OK I will admit … clapping turtle is taking some creative liberties but I will protect this tortoise with my life.) Designing emoji isn’t so much an act of artistic expression as it is a drawing séance — gathering historical record, familiarizing yourself with empirical citation and use and pulling it into the future.

While it’d be easy to say that these animations are less likely to fall victim to the fragmentation of their emoji elders because they’re just a bag of bitmapped images and not technically packaged as a font1 the truth is they are inextricably linked. Animated emoji are derivative of Unicode Emoji and inherit both the advantages and disadvantages that come with their popularity.

Two big advantages? They appear everywhere there is a compose field and as a result we’re intimately familiar with them. Consequently, there is a reasonable expectation that emoji behave the same (or meaningfully similar) no matter what app you’re in. It’s deeply troubling when the thing you write changes after you’ve written it. If emoji are intended for the explicit purpose of communicating the last thing we need is animation fragmentation: “tears of joy” (😂) belly laughing in one messaging app and what appears to be profusely sweating in another. lololol WHO WANTS TO BE MISUNDERSTOOD? Oy.

How to Use Animated Emoji

That’s why we made a website dedicated to these animated reactions so everyone can use them. Maybe you've seen them in Google Meet, Messages, or in YouTube. Easy for developers to integrate, citizens of the internet to download and upload to their favorite Discord server or sprinkle into their Slides presentation.

Scan the collection, watch them dance, and download in your preferred file format (We got something for everyone with avif, webp, and gifs). The website includes documentation for the animations, provides guidance on technical setup, and addresses other frequently asked questions around emoji like licensing (Saved you a click: The artwork is available under the CC BY 4.0 license).

With that … I leave you with this peak peacock, peacocking 😍

… oh yeah, and you can collage them together to make this …

Oh, I can’t hit send without sharing the waddling goose, magical unicorn, and eager pupper

OK. I’ll stop now!!!!

Happy emoting,
jd

It’s official: 21 new emoji are here, there, and (nearly) everywhere. Among the collection include a Wing 🪽 (denotes speed, flight, etc.), a leftwards and rightwards hand 🫸🫷 (a gesture for stop, push, high five, etc.), and a goose 🪿 (can be used to say … honk honk?). Emoji appear in the most unexpected of places so keep an eye out on your smart refrigerator, grocery kiosk, and your favorite messaging app of choice over the next few months.

👉 TBH I wrote this newsletter in September 2022 and paused on hitting publish until you could actually see the new emoji in your email inbox of choice. And now that these emoji are available in Gmail, across Android devices, and as of yesterday are available on so iOS I can FIIIINNAAALLLLYYYY justify finally hitting PUBLISH! (That being said, my apologies if you are reading this somewhere that has yet to roll out updates and your inbox is now filled with tofus. Welcome to the world of emoji where the work is never done.)

Can you find them in your keyboard?

What are the new emoji? Here’s a breakdown.

Animals & Nature (7): 🫏 Donkey, 🫎 Moose, 🪿 Goose, 🪽 Wing, 🪼 Jellyfish, 🪻 Hyacinth, 🐦‍⬛ Black Bird

Smileys & Emotion (4): 🫨 Shaking Face, 🩷 Pink Heart, 🩵 Light Blue Heart, 🩶 Grey Heart

Objects (4): 🪭 Folding Hand Fan, 🪮 Hair Pick, 🪈 Flute, 🪇 Maracas

Food & Drink (2): 🫛 Pea Pod, 🫚 Ginger

Symbols (2): 🪯 Khanda, 🛜 Wireless

Hands (2): 🫸 Rightwards Pushing Hand, 🫷 Leftwards Pushing Hand

A distinctive feature of this latest emoji update is that many of the characters are used alongside other emoji to create meaningful, flexible ideas. The more emoji can operate as building blocks 🏗️ and as less as super specific concepts 🖼️ the more versatile, fluid, and useful they become.

What is Old is New Again 🪽

First up: Wing emoji! Wings can be found in literature dating thousands of years back to Greek Mythology as well as in contemporary culture in cartoons and movies. They symbolize protection, freedom, and speed to name a few. No need to add a “flying pig” or “time flies” emoji when we can now place a wing emoji next to existing characters.

🫸 Let’s talk about hand emoji, with our hands 🫷

Researchers have found that talking with your hands “lightens the cognitive load” of speaking. Especially when you're talking about something abstract, conceptual, or strategic, using your hands makes it easier to navigate complex ideas in your brain. According to Lauren Gawne, Emoji Subcommittee volunteer and gesture linguist, emoji operate similarly. They are form of gesture that operate alongside your text to clarify intent or what isn’t literally being said.

While this is a rather literal leap, it comes as no surprise that gestural hand emoji are amongst the most popular emoji. This year’s new appendages — leftwards and rightwards pushing hands — go above and beyond their name. They can be used to communicate “high five”, “no thanks”, and “protection”. They contain multitudes and emoji that have multiple uses are consistently the most frequently used. From a Unicode perspective, this is critical. If we are to avoid emoji-bloat, characters that are symbolic and flexible has become increasingly more important. DYK: Once an emoji is added to the Unicode Standard, it is never removed 🌠

No pineapple pizza for me, thanks

To indicate size

Talk to the hand

High Five

To protect him with your life

Stop all the fighting!

FINALLY THE STAR (er, HEART) of the SHOW

What can I say about hearts that hasn’t been previously said? All three of these hearts can be used in combination with other emoji and because they are the shape of hearts, they don’t merely represent the color “pink” or “gray”. The heart shape implies that you care about the concept. For example, my friend Emily is a big fan of the NY Knicks, a local basketball team (😂). In the absence of a NY Knicks emoji, she now can string the hearts together to denote her fandom with the team colors (Orange, Silver, Blue, and Black) 🧡🩶💙🖤. Juxtaposing images together to convey personal concepts is how emoji (and memes! and videos!) operate at the speed of language, identity, and culture in digital spaces.

Other Unicode Updates

DYK: The Unicode Consortium is a small non-profit organization, which is funded primarily through membership fees and donations and the majority of characters in the Unicode Standard are not emoji? It’s true.

You can expect to see a nine pointed white star, used by members of the Bahá’í faith, eight symbols for celestial bodies, used by astronomers and astrologers, and twenty-nine additional Egyptian hieroglyph format controls alongside the 21 previously mentioned emoji on your device of choice in the next few months and early 2022.

Want to support the Unicode Consortium in its goal to support the world’s languages? Consider adopting a character! You don’t have to be limited to the 3,663 emoji: there are more than 136,000 characters that can be adopted.

jd

This past Fall, the Unicode Technical Committee announced the delay of Unicode 16.0. This wasn’t without precedent — COVID slowed down the release of Unicode 14.0 in 2020 and the world seemed to survive 😉. Subcommittees were well prepared and adjusted accordingly, discussing what this meant for their respective areas of expertise. 

For the Emoji Subcommittee (ESC) — the group responsible for defining the rules, algorithms, and properties necessary to achieve interoperability between different platforms for those smiley faces that appear on your keyboard (Shout out 😁🥰🥹🤔🫣🫡😵‍💫!) — this delay presented an opportunity. Sure, we were so close to exhaling a sigh of relief (the intake period for Emoji 16.0 proposals had just completed). But upon learning we couldn’t ship any new codepoints until 2024 we turned our energy towards recommending new emoji based on existing ones. (These are called emoji ZWJ sequences. That's when a combination of multiple emoji display as a single emoji … like 👩 🏽 +🏭  = 🧑🏽‍🏭).

When Less is More

An incredibly powerful aspect of written language is that it consists of a finite number of characters that can "do it all". And yet, as the emoji ecosystem has matured over time our keyboards have ballooned and emoji categories are about to hit or have hit a level of saturation. Upon reflecting on how emoji are used, the ESC has entered a new era where the primary way for emoji to move forward is not merely to add more of them to the Unicode Standard. Instead, the ESC approves fewer and fewer emoji proposals every year. 

But our work is not done. Not by a longshot. Language is fluid and doesn’t stand still. There is more to do! This “off-cycle” gives us a chance to address some long-standing major pain points using emoji. The first one that came to mind: skin-tone. 

What is a family?

The encoding of multi-person multi-tone support has matured over the years; However, the implementation can seem random to the average person: While it’s true, all people emoji have toned options (with the exception of characters where you can’t see skin like 🤺) there are … misfits. Some two people emoji offer tone support ( 🧑🏻‍❤️‍🧑🏿) others do not ( 👯). A few non RGI emoji render with tone but with no affordance to change one of the two characters (For example, 🤼🏾‍♂ renders with skintone on Android but as gold on iOS. WHY. This is why we standardize these things, people). 

And then … There is the suite of family emoji (👨‍👦👨‍👦‍👦👨‍👧👨‍👧‍👦👨‍👧‍👧👩‍👦👩‍👦‍👦👩‍👧👩‍👧‍👦👩‍👧‍👧 👨‍👨‍👦👨‍👨‍👦‍👦👨‍👨‍👧👨‍👨‍👧‍👦👨‍👨‍👧‍👧👩‍👩‍👦👩‍👩‍👦‍👦👩‍👩‍👧👩‍👩‍👧‍👦👩‍👩‍👧‍👧👨‍👩‍👦👨‍👩‍👦‍👦👨‍👩‍👧👨‍👩‍👧‍👦👨‍👩‍👧‍👧👪). These characters include two people, three people, sometimes four and none of them have any tone support (!). We seem to have a lot of family emoji and yet simultaneously not enough. 

The 26 “family” emoji can be broken down into four groups:

Despite the Unicode Standard containing 26 “family” emoji, each one of these glyphs is overly prescriptive with regard to delivering on a visual representation of a family. The inclusion of many permutations of families was well intentioned. But we can’t list them all, and by listing some of the combinations, it calls attention to the ones that are excluded. 

What even is a family? For some, family is the people you were raised with. Others have embraced friends as their chosen family. Some families have children, other families have pets. There are multi-generational families, mutliracial families and of course many families are any combination of all of these characteristics and more. 

Fortunately, we don’t need to add 7000 variants to your keyboards (even this would fall short of capturing the breadth of "family" as a concept). Instead we can juxtapose individual emoji together to capture a concept with some reasonable level of specificity — not too unlike arranging letters together to create words to convey concepts 😉

For emoji keyboards to advance in creating more intuitive and personalized experiences the Emoji Subcommittee is recommending a visual deprecation of the family emoji. This  small set of emoji will be redesigned as part of a multi-phase effort to “complete the set” of toned variants for the remaining multi-person emoji. This of course begs the question: when there are as many families as there are people in the world, is there an effective way at conveying the concept of “family” without being overly prescriptive in defining what is and is not a family? Well, thankfully icons can do a lot of heavy lifting without requiring very much detail.

When is an emoji running for the police or getting chased by them?

Another area the ESC is actively exploring is how the semantics of emoji sequences can differ when writing directionality changes. Some emoji characters have semantics that encode implicit directionality but when the string is mirrored and their meaning may be unintentionally lost or changed.

What, if anything, can we do to aid in ensuring that messages are meaningfully translated be them tiny pictures or tiny letters? As part of 15.1 we’re proposing a small set of emoji with strong directionality — with an initial focus on people — to face the opposite direction. Soon you too can run towards or away from … excitement.

Emoji 15.1

Given that the intake cycle of emoji proposals for Unicode 16.0 ended last July, the Emoji Subcommittee has also decided to temporarily delay the intake of Unicode Version 17.0 proposals until April 2024. Fortunately, you won’t have to wait until then to get new emoji. (Note: I know it sounds like I’m talking about the past and future simultaneously … the emoji lifecycle is looooong and as a result overlaps with multiple releases. Expect a future blog post about the Emoji 15.0 candidates landing early this year (Shout out goose, pink heart, and pushing hands). I’ve been holding off writing about this set until you can actually see them on your phones but given that we’re already talking about 2024 maybe it’s time I dust that blog post off).

Anyways, among the list of Emoji 15.1 recommendations for 2024 includes 578 characters (most of them the candidates described above to support directionality). The list also includes a few humble additions including a broken chain, a lime, a non-poisonous mushroom, a nodding and shaking face, and a phoenix bird. Each one of these leverages a unique valid ZWJ  sequence of emoji so while they look like atomic characters made of a single codepoint they are composed of two or more codepoints.

Broken chain is the result of a 🔗💥 ZWJ and contains a variety of meanings, such as freedom, breaking a cycle, or perhaps a broken url ;-). Nodding face and shaking face are composed of arrows to imply movement in a still image (🙂↔️) and (🙂↕️). Oh, and of course there is a phoenix rising from the ashes (🐦🔥), an ancient metaphor that captures the zeitgeist of today.

The Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) will review the required documents at its first meeting of 2023 in January – and if these candidates move forward, you can expect an update from the UTC later this Spring and Summer.

Special thanks to the Emoji Subcommittee volunteers for making this possible.

Support Unicode

Finally, if you are already a contributor — or member of Unicode (or your company or organization is), thank you, Danke, Děkuju,  धन्यवाद, merci, 谢谢你, grazie, நன்றி, and gracias! What we have accomplished is only possible because of supporters like you. 

To support Unicode’s mission to ensure everyone can communicate in their languages across all devices, please consider adopting a character, making a gift of stock, or making a donation. As Unicode is a US-based non-profit, 501(c)3 organization, your contribution may be eligible for a tax deduction. Please consult with a tax advisor for details. 

In the early days of the internet, attempts at humor online (sarcasm, irony, parody, etc.) were sometimes mistaken as serious which created a frenzy of denouncements on your favorite BBS that sparked more arguments. (The internet really hasn’t changed much in 40 years has it?) In pursuit of wanting to reduce miscommunication a digital smiley face was born September 19, 1982 :-)

Though there is plenty of evidence of emoticons existing in a pre-digital world dating as far back as 1881, Scott Fahlman, a research professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon has his own receipts:

19-Sep-82 11:44    Scott E  Fahlman             :-)
From: Scott E  Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

:-)

Read it sideways.  Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes, given current trends.  For this, use

:-(

You haven’t aged one bit, smiley face :-)

This is when you’d expect me to start talking about emoji

Nope. That’s not where this bloggy-letter is headed. I mean sure, I’m gonna talk about the Unicode Standard. And sure, the Unicode Consortium has brought us such hits as “😃” and “🤡” but while everyone has been panning for gold in the great Emoji Rush, behind the scenes Unicode has been working hard in the Unicode mines, digitizing the world’s languages for over thirty years. As a result they have gifted the world with the most precious of all tiny smiley characters: emoticons.

That’s right, without Unicode we’d never have the global phenomenon that is shruggie ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What does Shruggie have to do with encoding alphabets? Well, let’s take a look. What even is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯? It is a mish-mash of different written languages: A Japanese katakana ツ (tsu) to represent a pair of eyes and smirking mouth alongside a few basic Latin characters to create shapely shrugging appendages. This emote wouldn’t render if Unicode wasn't building and maintaining a universal character set.

For those less familiar with Unicode: What is Unicode? Basically, Unicode, is as close as we get to Universal Digital Encoding. Unicode says these are characters on a list and this is what they mean and what their names are and they map between legacy encodings and a universal character set.

Shruggie isn’t an outlier! A dramatic table flip leverages not one not two not three not four but five Unicode blocks. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

(If you realize things are gonna be fine and you wanna place the table back, Unicode has you covered.) ┬⁠─⁠┬⁠ノ⁠(⁠ ⁠º⁠ ⁠_⁠ ⁠º⁠ノ⁠)

Look of Disapproval, ಠ_ಠ, is a combination of an underscore and the letter “tha” in Kannada, one of the major Dravidian languages of India.

Your favorite spammer, Lenny Face ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°), is a little bit Latin, a tad IPA, a dash of diacritics with a splash of a degree symbol.

Imagine, a world without ヽ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ﾉ.

Expressive Building blocks 🏗️

There’s this WHOLE THING in linguistics that language is special because you use smaller units that don’t mean anything to build up meaningful concepts when combined. Language is *powerful* because a finite number of glyphs can Do It All (very naughty conflating language and writing here, don’t tell the linguists).

Sound familiar?

You got your classic shruggie

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Throw in some dingbats and now you have a putting on a brave face shruggie

╮⁠(⁠.⁠ ⁠❛⁠ ⁠ᴗ⁠ ⁠❛⁠.⁠)⁠╭

A couple geometric shapes and suddenly we have a cute animal shruggie

乁⁠[⁠ ⁠◕⁠ ⁠ᴥ⁠ ⁠◕⁠ ⁠]⁠ㄏ

To great effect, emoji can be slipped in for an exceptional I’m gonna lose my ding dang mind shruggie

¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠☯⁠෴⁠☯⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

This phenomenon is not unique to Japanese style emoticons (they tend to emote through eye expression). Western smileys are in on the fun too (generally these are read horizontally and most of the emotion is conveyed in the mouth area).

Hello :-)

Replace the colon with an eight to represent sunglasses→ Hello 8-)

Swap the parenthesis for a P to convey a tongue → Hello :-P

Dash nose not doing it for you? Look no further than designer Susan Kare who is fond of the lowercase-n nose → Hello :n)

The 40th anniversary of the smiley emoticon doesn’t put :-) behind us but instead firmly in front of us, teaching us whipper snappers how to it’s done.

Emoticons may look primitive but their low-tech weakness is also their strength. They are easy to type (but just enough extra effort to make them special), are really flexible, and I’d go so far to argue as more universally relatable. After all, we are hardwired to find faces in just about everything from a slightly burnt piece of toast to a parenthesis and colon. Notable comics theorist Scott McCloud has written extensively about how it is a lot easier to identify with a more simple abstraction than a more realistic face.

Ok, Now I’ll start talking about emoji 🥺👉👈

Tearing a page out of the emoticon hand book, emoji characters are also composed to create entirely new concepts on the fly. 👁️👄👁️ No need for the Unicode Consortium to encode a new emoji for “hand-washing” (this could take two years!) — just add a little soap and water 🧼🖐️🚰. Care to express your inner turtle in a field of four leaf clovers? Beep bop boop, voila:

We have found all kinds of inventive ways to hack language and do interesting things with it. Language is a low bandwidth technology to convey our infinitely prismatic emotions and the internet comes with it’s own set of limitations but as famed mathematician Dr. Ian Malcom has noted, "life finds a way”.

It should go without saying but be sure to use emoji and emoticons responsibly — consider your audience when you’re repurposing unicode symbols (⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)⁠✧⁠*⁠。. Is it 𝒸𝓊𝓉ℯ to 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗲 your tweets 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖜𝖆𝖞? Have you 𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩𝙚𝙣𝙚𝙙 to what it 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 with assistive technologies like 𝓥𝓸𝓲𝓬𝓮𝓞𝓿𝓮𝓻? (⁠⊙⁠_⁠◎⁠)

Artist Osamu Sato’s book, “The Art of Computer Designing: A Black and White Approach” beautifully acknowledges, “The work of the past accumulates and is made again' which is a poetic way of thinking about where we are today expressing ourselves online where our visual vocabulary is vast: We have gifs, stickers, memes, short form video, emoticons and ofc emoji. The beautiful thing about the proliferation of digital expression is that it is created by the people, for the people. Want to invent a new word? Just start saying it. See something unique about the world that everyone has seen but not articulated in a particular way? Make a meme. Want to indicate you are a friendly face? Make an emoticon.

(⁠/⁠･⁠ω⁠･⁠(⁠-⁠ω⁠-⁠)

ᕙ⁠(⁠⇀⁠‸⁠↼⁠‶⁠)⁠ᕗ

/⁠╲⁠/⁠\⁠╭⁠(⁠•⁠‿⁠•⁠)⁠╮⁠/⁠\⁠╱⁠\

♪⁠┌⁠|⁠∵⁠|⁠┘⁠♪└⁠|⁠∵⁠|⁠┐⁠♪

Love,
jennifer ✧⁠◝⁠(⁠⁰⁠▿⁠⁰⁠)⁠◜⁠✧

How do you use emoji?

As punctuation?

You are amazing 🎉

As volume?

You are amazing 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

As the intonation in your voice?

🎉 you 🎉 are 🎉 amazing 🎉

For emphasis?

You are amazing 🏆🎆✨🎉💪🤩💅

When sexting?

You 🫵 are ✨ amazing ✨🎆🍆💦🦪🥵🏆

There’s no right way or wrong way to use emoji and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably trying to sell you something 💸 and definitely a card carrying member of the Industrial Emoji Complex 🪪. Don’t get me wrong: communicating in digital spaces has its own rules and structures … they just tend to to be a lot more f l u i d and ł₦₣ØⱤ₥₳Ⱡ than traditional written communication has been enforced in the past (I’m looking at you, AP Style Guide) 🧑‍🏫

For some, this can be stressful (No one wants to be misunderstood) for others this is freedom (language can feel like a low-bandwidth technology to communicate our infinitely prismatic emotions). While many written languages are derivative of a verbal equivalent (You speak French … you write French), emoji are … different. They are a digital native, born from texting. They aren't a new language as much as they operate along side existing ones … in those long silences between words … providing clarity in the absence of body language. Emoji say what isn’t always being said.

😜 I'm 😘 sorry 🤣 not 🥳 sorry 🥰

✍️ Writing ✍️ is ✍️ a ✍️ new ✍️ technology ✍️

It’s easy to assume that we’ve always been writing but the reality is we’ve been talking a lot longer. Linguist John McWhorter contextualizes this rather neatly in this NPR segment, “If humanity had existed for 24 hours, then writing only came along at about 11:07 p.m.” 🤯

Why did we even start writing in the first place? Well, primarily to track how many chickens we had or payments to be made. The fact that writing has gone from counting livestock to souNDinG LikE SpOnGeBoB SqUaRePaNtS is a linguistic miracle ✨

Today, how many words are in the English language? Oxford English Dictionary says it’s 171,146. Meanwhile, Urban Dictionary has 1.6 million entries 💀. Out of curiosity I looked up how many words exist in German and the estimation goes as high as 5.3 million which explains a lot. (Lol, plz take don’t take these numbers too seriously). Despite all these words … sometimes I can’t seem to find the right one to express how I feel. There’s something about the specificity of a word that makes language feel like a prison. Or as Carl Jung wrote, “Loneliness does not come from being alone, but from being unable to communicate things that seem important.”

That’s where emoji step in.

Keyboard? ⌨️ More 🐌 like 😴 key-bored 💤 (sorry)

The problem with digital keyboards — well, one of the problems — is that they tend to index very hard on reproducing formal conventions of the written word. Auto-correct, spelling, word suggestion are useful features that fundamentally assume the way we message our friends or leave comments on tiktok is the same way we write a book report.

Those who dare to be a bit more experimental can (gasp) hit the emoji button and insert a 🫠 or a 🥹. Sadly, browsing emoji for “the right” expression requires more effort than you usually have time for. The way emoji pallets work hasn’t fundamentally changed since 2008. According to Emojipedia, iOS only had 471 emoji . Today, it is a seemingly bottomless scrollable list of 3,664 emoji (and we continue to add more every year 😵‍💫).

Recent developments to improve “emoji suggestion”, search, speech to text, etc. are getting better but tend to index heavily on word replacement and assume one emoji is enough 🎷🐛

That’s why this week we rolled out a new feature with Android's Gboard team that takes a step to challenge the status quo a bit. Maybe keyboards don't have to white knuckle the past so much and loosen up, begin to operate at the speed of language online with the thanks of emojification.

How it works

• Type a message in your favorite chat app of choice using gboard.

• Add an emoji at the end and ✨voila✨ a magic wand will appear

• Tap the magic wand!

• Tap it again

• And again

• And again to cycle through different ways to inject emoji into your sentence

• Press send to add the right 🔥 emoji 🎩 magic 🌈 to share with your friends.

The small print: This feature is now available in the Gboard Beta app in English for now, and is coming to all Gboard English typers over the next weeks.

The creativity of the human spirit is unstoppable. Give people new tools to be more expressive and I promise yOu wE'll dO More tHAn CoUnt cHIcKens 🐤

Ever scratched your head wondering why there isn’t a scratching your head emoji? Are you thinking gesture 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔 about hand emoji? Well, you have found the right newsletter. The latest and greatest emoji update (Emoji 14.0) includes 37 new emoji and ten of them are hand gestures!!!

1. 🫢 Face with Open Eyes and Hand Over Mouth

2. 🫣 Face with Peeking Eye

3. 🫡 Saluting Face

4. 🫳 Palm Down Hand

5. 🫴 Palm Up Hand

6. 🫰 Hand with Index Finger and Thumb Crossed

7. 🫵 Index Pointing at the Viewer

8. 🫶 Heart Hands

9. 🫱 Rightwards Hand

10. 🫲 Leftwards Hand

WHY SO MANY HANDS?!?!?!?!

I’m glad you asked.

Hands and faces emoji have been included since the early days of emoji encoding and are among the most frequently used type of emoji. While frequency isn’t the only way to measure the quality of an emoji … there is a reason why hands are so popular. Hand gestures, eye contact, body language “talk” 💅🏿 just as much as words 🙏🏻 We are HARD WIRED to gesticulate 🫣. We gesture when talking even if we aren’t face to face 🤌🏽🤌🏽🤌🏽🤌🏽 — like on the telephone or practicing a speech 🫵🏼. "The act of gesturing is certainly universal, as far as we know. In every group yet studied, the hands at least occasionally stir and take flight as people talk," notes researcher Kensy Cooperrider.

The key phrase here is “the act”. Specific gestures ARE NOT universal (pro tip: don't go throwing 👌🏾 in Brazil unless you wanna get tackled).

So, how many hand shape emoji exist? Well, as of Emoji 14.0 there are nine “face-hand” emoji and forty-three “hand emoji”:

face-hand 🫡🤔🤫🫢🤭🥱🤗🫣😱

hand-fingers-open 👋🤚🖐✋🖖🫱🫲🫳🫴

hand-fingers-partial 👌🤌🤏✌🤞🫰🤟🤘 🤙

hand-single-finger 👈 👉👆🖕👇☝🫵

hand-fingers-closed 👍👎✊👊🤛🤜

multiple-hands 👏🙌🫶👐🤲🤝🙏

hand-prop ✍💅🤳

arms 💪🦾

From a technical perspective it’s worth observing that unlike “People” 🙅🏼‍♂️🤷🏾‍♀️🙎🏻 “Smiley” 🥲🫤😜 do not take skin tone or gender modifiers. And, unlike “People” 🧑🏻‍🏫👩🏾‍⚕️🤵🏼‍♂️, “Hand shapes” 💪🏼✊🏿👋🏾 take skin tone but not gender modifiers. That means these two types of emoji (😅👍) have fewer modifications than full “People” 🧘🏻💁🏽‍♂️🤸🏾‍♀️ emoji, which have both gender and skin tone modifiers. Given the state of most emoji keyboards today, this reduces the cognitive load the average user has to make when choosing an emoji to represent themself.

You’re in Good Hands 🤲

There is loads of guidance on hand emoji thanks to Lauren Gawne, gesture linguist and emoji subcommittee volunteer. Lauren has published a number of documents including tips on what to consider when writing a proposal and filed reports exploring emblem gestures that occur in large populations. (She also has an EXCELLENT podcast Lingthusiasm, of which I am a paid Patreon member. #notanad #SMASHSUBSCRIBE!)

After reading countless proposals and writing a few ourselves, we have some tips on preparing a hand-gesture proposal:

Go BIG before you go ₛₘₐₗₗ

It’s really difficult to design a system that is created piecemeal. That’s why when writing a proposal my first step is to always take a step back before getting too deep on any one idea. One example of this is a comparison of Unicode faces and JVL morphemes (Japanese Visual Language of manga). This audit of over 60 concepts (conducted thanks to the research of comics theorist Neil Cohn) resulted in the encoding of four emoji: 🥹 🫥 🫠 😶‍🌫️.

🧑‍🏫 Pro Tip: We recommend citing evidence of how your addition completes a set or doesn’t expose the Unicode Technical Committee to more proposals of similar type. Compatibility with existing writing systems continues to be a priority. Kushim Jiang’s document shows the utility of comparing proposed Unicode emoji to characters on other platforms, including QQ and WeChat. 

Hands or faces with objects

To propose a hand or face emoji with an object (e.g. 💅✍️🤳🤧) you need to demonstrate that the combination is intrinsic and requires the combination of both the face/hand and the object.

🧑‍🏫 Pro Tip: You may find more success proposing a hand emoji that can be used alongside existing object emoji rather than proposing that it be combined with one. See: Hand with palm facing up and Hand with palm facing down (L2/20-213)

Empirical use

Emoji proposals require evidence that your concept is something that is already in common use and not theoretical. Rather than trying to invent something new, provide evidence that the proposed image is a long standing visual morpheme, trope, or emblem. Faces and hands usually have meanings that are not easily pinned down by words but present the strongest search term data you can.

🧑‍🏫 Pro Tip: Don’t forget to supplement your data with additional evidence that demonstrates your emoji’s pervasiveness. Look to ancient scripture, literature, culture, comics, art, etc.

Specificity isn’t always your friend 

As is the case with all emoji, creating a case for more nuanced gestures isn’t always effective. Face emoji, rather than full body emoji, are easier to see at emoji sizes, and require no modifiers for skin color and gender, and therefore are more accessible to more people. 

Can’t decide if your emoji should be a person or an object? A person or a smiley? A hand or a person? 🧑‍🏫 Pro Tip: People emoji are tricky to justify encoding due to the technical complexity so if you can’t decide between a “person” emoji or something else … choose something else.

Time to get your hands dirty ✍

With so many new hand gestures landing in your keyboard, let's take a look at how they got there. “Hand gestures are not universal so there's only so many that are really valuable on the emoji keyboard,” Lauren told me over chat. “My favouites are the ones that are flexible and can have different meanings: the 🫰 can be a heart made with your fingers, a click, or money money money.”

I love that one too. Here is a small sampling of proposals that range from hands to smileys with hands and all of them are money money money 🫰🫰🫰

🫠 Melting Face (L2/20-072)

The most anticipated emoji of the year™️, the melting face proposal includes images from multimedia to illustrate a wide range of metaphoric uses.

🫰 Hand with index finger and thumb (L2/19-327)

One emoji. Many gestures. Note the name isn’t prescriptive of what the hand gesture means and is instead more descriptive. Gestures are flexible depending on who or what you’re talking about (can be a hand snapping 🫰, fingers rubbing the world’s tiniest violin 🫰🎻, or finger heart 🫰💖).

🫴 🫳 Hand with palm facing up and Hand with palm facing down (L2/20-213)

A great example of how to demonstrate the flexibility of a new emoji by how it interacts with a wide variety of objects (throw a hot potato 🫴🔥🥔, drop the mic 🫳🎤). This document also includes two different emoji to argue for completeness of this set.

🫥 Dotted-Line-Face (L2/20-223)

As discussed in previous newsletters, this proposal illustrates the application of a distorted effect using images from literature.

🫢 Face With Open Eyes and Hand Over Mouth (L2/19-304)

Oy. Who wants to be misunderstood??? This successful submission on the basis of compatibility clearly demonstrates a need for the addition of an emoji similar to an existing emoji (FACE WITH HAND OVER MOUTH 🤭). Citing examples from pop culture, media, and literature to support the value of disambiguating the change that happens when the eyes are smiling (existing emoji) and eyes open in surprise (this proposal).

🫵 Index Pointing at the Viewer (L2/20-212)

An iconic hand-shape found in popular iconography and signed languages. 

🫡 Saluting-Face (L2/19-396)

What to do when there is no global agreement on how to salute? Compromise. (This proposal also provides a case for a face rather than body with additional gender and skin tone modifiers.)

Holding my Hand to Fire

Despite this whole bloggyletter focusing on hand emoji … the truth is not being able to use ANY emoji when I text is like talking with my hands tied behind my back 😤👎 In a way, all emoji function as gesture even if they aren’t literally hand gestures — ✨🔥💕🎉💯 — many of the most popular emoji seem to follow a pattern of communicative non-speech visualizations — dare we call them "Emoji gestures"? Again, Lauren Gawne with fellow linguist, Gretchen McCulloch have written about this extensively. To put it simply: Hand emoji are gesture 💪💪💪💪. Fire emoji are gesture 🔥🔥🔥🔥. ALL THE GREAT EMOJI ARE GESTURE, CAPICHE???? 🤌🤌🤌🤌🤌