Presenting the Shady Characters Periodic Table of Emoji

I have made a thing! Head over to emoji.shadycharacters.co.uk to peruse the Shady Characters Periodic Table of Emoji.

What do I mean by a periodic table of emoji? Well, I answer that question in some detail in the notes under the table itself, but briefly, I wanted to see if I could use a table to tell us something about how emoji are perceived. Which emoji are positive? Which are negative? Which ones convey sentiments that match their appearances, and which deviate from them?

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Face with Tears of Joy on 99% Invisible

I’ve always really enjoyed 99% Invisible, Roman Mars’ long-running podcast about design, which makes it all the more special to have appeared on three different episode in the past — on the octothorpe (#), the interrobang (‽), and pocket calculators respectively. Now, to mark the publication of Face with Tears of Joy, I’m pleased to say that I’m on it again!

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Miscellany № 107: old books (and a new Book)

Some big news today: The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of our Time will be published soon in paperback!

The paperback edition is updated from the hardback, with all of the various errata fixed and a number of changes made to account for the book’s paperback rather than hardcover construction. If you remember, the hardback edition had a number of references to its own physical form (“Tip the book towards you and look at the spine”, and so on) which have now been modified accordingly. Of course, the paperback edition provides a new and different set of reference points, so if some passages now ask you to find a hardback on your bookshelf, others can now tell you to look again at the paperback in your hands.

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