A post from Shady Characters

Emoji, part 6b: steps in the right direction

This is the seventh in a series of thirteen posts on Emoji (😂). Start at PART 1, continue to PART 8 or view ALL POSTS in the series.


The emoji enlightenment dawned in August 2015. As we saw last time, that was the month in which the Unicode Consortium published “Emoji 1.0”, a document that listed all available emoji characters and, crucially, described how to create new emoji by combining existing symbols.1 It was a big change to the status quo, and it was done with one overriding aim in mind: to allow emoji to become more representative of the people who used it. So what did Unicode do with that newfound freedom? We’ll find out over the next two parts as we follow emoji’s journey from Emoji 1.0 right up to the present day.


1.
“Emoji Version 1.0”. Emojipedia. Accessed February 7, 2019.

 

2 comments on “Emoji, part 6b: steps in the right direction

  1. Comment posted by dtw42 on

    Regarding default skin tones (and the difficulties in picking one that won’t prompt outcries) – blues and greens surely were never going to take off – they’d make everybody look ill or like aliens. Isn’t grey (dull-looking though it is) the best solution? If someone’s rendered in mono, you can’t tell what colour they are…

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