World Emoji Day 2021: Who Decides Which Emoji Will Be Released?

We all love to use emojis online, but have you ever wondered who creates them and decides which emoji will be released?

By Ashri Khandelwal | Updated: 17 July 2021 14:14 IST

World Emoji Day 2021: Who Decides Which Emoji Will Be Released?

Photo Credit: Emojis

Highlights

World Emoji Day is celebrated on July 17 every year
Shigetaka Kurita created the first set of emojis
You can also submit your emoji proposal

Emojis offer a better way to add an emotional touch to a message. ‘I am excited' might sound boring in a text, but add an emoji to it, it will automatically say what's in your mind. ‘Lol' has become a laughing emoji, ‘Ok' has become a thumbs-up emoji and so on. These small characters have become the second language in our digital world. In fact, a recent study by Bobble AI revealed that 83 per cent of people think that emojis, stickers and Gifs help in expressing themselves better while chatting online.

Every year, July 17 is celebrated as World Emoji Day globally, so today we take a look at who created the first set of emojis and how they reach the devices globally.

A lookback

Emoji is a Japanese word that means pictograph or pictogram. Initially, there were emoticons :-), ;-D, and then later in 1999, Shigetaka Kurita, who worked on the development team for “i-mode”, an early mobile internet platform from Japan's main mobile carrier DOCOMO, created the first set of emojis. These were mostly symbols of sun, clouds, umbrella, snowman, cell phone, TV, GameBoy, and all moon phases.

Emojis then slowly started to become popular in Japan, and around the world. And, now, they have conquered texting. But, have you ever wondered who decides what emoji will be made?

Who makes these emojis?

A non-profit organisation called Unicode Consortium manages emojis. It decides when new emojis will be released and launches new emojis every year that are created by everyday people. You don't need to be a professional designer to submit an emoji proposal. If you feel, there is something that needs to be represented as an emoji, you can fill out a form on Unicode Consortium's website and submit your emoji proposal.

However, these emojis go through tough selection criteria before making their way into our phones. The process is so long that it takes one year for the Unicode Consortium to finally decide what emojis will be released. It generally releases 50 to 70 unique emoji characters per year, and every new emoji that gets added is added permanently.

Let us know in the comments section below which is your favourite emoji?

The recently-concluded first season of Loki is our focus this week on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

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