From Unicode to Your Fingertips
From Unicode to Your Fingertips
Scroll to the end for a gift from me to you:
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”:
Read the emoji proposal and look at unicode’s reference icon
Consider its purpose in a communication context
Do additional research (Confer with experts on the subject when necessary)
Evaluate how it works with other existing emoji (To ensure distinctiveness)
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
Not all Unicode Characters have a method of input but they can still render as characters if there is a font that supports it
Sadly, design software like Figma doesn’t yet support color fonts (they default to your system). Do me a solid and file a bug/FR!! ;-)