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Human stories behind emoji designs
- yung_steezy 5y agoI never used emojis in my private life until I started working as a software developer. I end up using them all day, everyday on Slack at work and now they have bled into my vocabulary everywhere.
- bartvk 5y agoI preferred simple smileys and have used them privately in the IRC days. But emoji actually have more variety, color-wise. I recently started dating and it's incredibly wholesome to get a heart emoji, which comes in a dozen or so colors. What's funny about that particular emoji, is that the hearts are actually different, separate emoji. While many others, like the U+1F9D1 PERSON emoji, can be combined with skin tones. I'm not quite certain why there isn't a simple HEART emoji, modified with a color but it's probably historical.
- lopis 5y agoI believe the emoji modifiers appeared much later than the hearts variations. The red heart is also an OG emoji and variations, such as broken heart (2010) and purple heart (2010) came much later. The skin tone modifiers seem to appear in 2017, and some other joined emoji seem to date back to 2015 [2]. So in summary, it's historical and changing it would break unicode. [1] https://emojipedia.org/search/?q=heart https://emojipedia.org/search/?q=heart [2] https://emojipedia.org/eye-in-speech-bubble/ https://emojipedia.org/eye-in-speech-bubble/
- clydethefrog 5y agoThe hearts also used to have conflicting descriptions, or at least confusing templates. The charming hairy heart from Android 4.4 was fun. https://emojipedia.org/google/android-4.4/yellow-heart/ https://emojipedia.org/google/android-4.4/yellow-heart/
- norov 5y agoMy problem is every chat app now interprets :) as an emoji.
- ASalazarMX 5y agoAt least you seem happy about that.
- toto444 5y agoI have my own little-known human story. I was missing a knight emoji for some personal project and decided to make a request to the unicode consortium. The problem is I can't draw. I asked if someone could make one knight emoji for free on r/characterdrawing . Someone gracefully accepted to make one and our submission is now 'Under Consideration'. https://old.reddit.com/r/characterdrawing/comments/mw0wy9/rf_a_knight_emoji_for_uwooden_train1033/ https://old.reddit.com/r/characterdrawing/comments/mw0wy9/rf...
- smichel17 5y agoYou can definitely learn to draw, if you want. It just takes practice. I used to think I couldn't draw, but after taking a painting class, I learned that it's much more technique (and less intuition) than you might think.
- bartvk 5y agoIf you can't draw, do pixel art. I can't draw, but my kid likes to draw while I sit with her at the dinner table. I didn't know what to do, so I grabbed some graph paper and drew a 5x5 pixelated kitty which she found very funny.
- kzrdude 5y agoThere is a different HN story that doesn't accept comments, why? I don't see any there and can't write there. It is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28231153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28231153
- tomhoward 5y agoIt's a YC company job posting. They appear on the front page every day, and never allow votes or comments.
- chrismckleroy 5y agoCan someone please help with binocular emoji? That is woven in the story of my life here.
- hellotaher 5y agoYou may not think much about the emoji you use to text every day but there are compelling human stories behind them. I just learn something new from this! I used emoji always but I don't know the story before. Most of the emoji I used from https://www.uihut.com/icon/icon https://www.uihut.com/icon/icon.
- clydethefrog 5y agoThe Chinese-American emoji are not loved by all users with a Chinese background. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/the-westernization-of-emoji/527616/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/05/the-w... Something like a gaiwan, a rice cooker or a jar of lao gan ma would be more iconic? I still like emoji, but I feel there is a heavy Western bias seeping into them. I am curious it the vendors will allow the Afghanistan flag to be changed if the Taliban stays in power. Seems less controversial on a global perspective than a trans flag.
- rhn_mk1 5y agoI'm going to warm up to emoji a lot after I hear stories from Africa or India (or other area where credit cards are not abundant), embedding their own culture into the standard. As it is, the commitee accepting emoji is heavily biased towards the West, by having web pages in English only, and by limiting access by requiring a credit card.
- toto444 5y agoAs far as I know there is no credit card required.
- rhn_mk1 5y agoI mean, the barrier to joining the Unicode Consortium – which decides on the emoji policy for everyone – is biased this way: https://www.unicode.org/consortium/joinform.html https://www.unicode.org/consortium/joinform.html Granted, it's slightly different from the emoji submission procedure, but tightly related.
- drstewart 5y agoBiased towards the west? There's emoji mountain is literally Mount Fuji, a shinkansen emoji, a literal map of Japan emoji (the only country to have one), and like half the food emojis are Japan-specific snacks.
- yoz-y 5y agoYes but this is a historical artifact from the Docomo character set.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rhn_mk1 5y agoOne could argue that Japan has become very close to the west after the WW2. Additionally, bias rarely manifests itself in complete erasure, but usually in making something easier, and something else more difficult.
- noneeeed 5y agoThe podcast this story is from has been pretty interesting if you're interested in the social side of technology. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09ndpbv https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09ndpbv As much as I miss people using old-school smilies, emoji really have enriched things like Slack a lot for me. However I think in Slack it's the ability to add your own, every company seems to have it's own vocabulary of custom emojis that form part of the culture.