Written by We Are Social U.S. Designer, Vivienne Apsey
Our everyday consumption of social stimulation ranges from the “doom scroll” of Tik Tok to friends or family flow of texts throughout the day. By the time we lay our heads down at the end of the day, our eyes have seen hundreds of emojis.
From the primary ideation and usage of Emoticon, defined as a pictorial representation of a facial expression, many designers took inspiration from all the punctuation combinations emoting all types of emotion to a more universal look and feel. In 1999, Shigetaka Kurita created almost two hundred “Emojis” which are translated from Japanese e (絵, ‘picture’) + moji (文字, ‘character’). Kurita’s essential goal was to advance electronic communication in a precise and graphic vernacular. From then on, the little shiny Emojis we all know and love came to be.
In today’s world, Emojis give us a sense of global community. Their expressions and personification of even inanimate objects make Emoji an international language. A simple fruit such as 🍑 or a 🔗 can bring us many different avenues of interpretation. Each character’s meaning changes based on many variables like demographic or generation, but all those different interpretations make Emoji fun to use. Former Apple design intern who designed over 200 Emojis, Angela Guzman who was unaware of the word itself when first being briefed on the project describes them as an “icon, an image, it’s something that expresses any emotion” which is truly what each individual little character emotes.
More brands and companies are using emojis to tap into the visual representation of quick big social buzz words mixed with viral trends. Xbox took advantage of the everlasting trend of inserting an emphasis on a word between two sparkle emojis.
Wendy’s Twitter team quickly jumped at the viral “When I text you….[insert emoji]” trend.
Heck, Wordle, the web-based word puzzle that took social by storm took advantage of the simple green and black emoji squares to share scores without ruining the word of the day. A pure feast for companies to share their own Wordle emoji pattern.
For We Are Social, our NY team’s weekly Culture Tracker highlights the current and upcoming trends on all social platforms. Our emoji key is an example of a fast coding system that can be identified at first glance.
🧶 mass conversation
💥 one-off / high-engagement
🌡 continuation / evolution
🔮 emerging trend / format
♻️ revival trend
Emojis are here to stay, only expanding in amount and importance. As we add more inclusive options, we strive to see more use of Emojis and keep them in our day-to-day repertoire.
🎩’s off to World Emoji Day! Celebrate by exploring through the World Emoji Awards Twitter naming the #MostAnticipatedEmoji of 2022 and bopping to this classic Apple Animoji music video.
