The Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit that maintains text standards to support all the world’s written languages across every device, today debuted a new look for unicode.org.

The Consortium invites emoji and language enthusiasts to celebrate World Emoji Day on July 17 and “Adopt a Character” to support its ongoing efforts. More than 136,000 characters are up for adoption — including this new Emoji 12.0 additions such as the sloth, the sea otter, the waffle and Saturn.

Those who choose to adopt will receive a custom digital badge they can display to publicly show their support, whether on their website or social media. Learn more and adopt your character here.

Apple offers a look at new emoji coming to iPhone this fall

To celebrate World Emoji Day, Apple is previewing a selection of new emoji coming this fall, revealing the newest designs that bring even more diversity to the keyboard, alongside fun and exciting additions to popular categories of food, animals, activities and smiley faces. We’re most excited about the new mixed gender and skin tone couple Emoji, which is something we have called for at Emoji Foundation for a while now.  You can see the new designs in Apple’s press release.

The Most Popular New Emoji for 2019 from World Emoji Awards

Announced live at the National Museum of Cinema in Turin, Italy, the winner of the 2019 award for Most Popular New Emoji went to   Smiling Face With Hearts.

via Emojipedia

UMLAUT SUES EMOJI FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT

Lawyers working on the behalf of Germanic vowel alternation have filed a class action against ‘cheap and disrespectful’ ideograms. Too often complicated exchanges are being reduced down to a basic sequence of winking face, heavy black heart and Theresa May burning Windrush documentation.
A spokesman for Umlauts explained: ‘My client has been squiggling over the International Phonetic Alphabet for over a thousand years. Quite frankly it’s insulting to see some gurning chancer telling us how to feel – when James Corden will do that for free’.

newsbiscuit.com

Unicode considers new color variations for Emoji

This could be used for emoji representations of a black cat or a glass of white wine, for example. For more info, see the Working Draft for Proposed Update UTS #51: Unicode Emoji, section 2.9 “Color”.

The new emoji in the set are listed in Emoji Recently Added v12.0, with sample images. The new Emoji typically start showing up on mobile phones in September/October — some platforms may release them earlier.

We are so excited to finally have interracial couple Emoji, which is something we have called for at Emoji Foundation for a while now. Other notable characters are the drop of blood, sea otter (a personal favorite) and disability emoji. Whose life could be complete without a yawning emoji? And finally, the oyster emoji, which is apparently the end of sexism.

FINALLY, SEXISM IS OVER https://t.co/XjBTkKQYAK

— Christine Love (@christinelove) February 5, 2019

Without Further Ado, the 59 new Emoji

Unicode has selected March 5 as the release date for Unicode 12.0. This is when the final emoji list for 2019 will be published (Emoji 12.0 is currently still being decided upon), alongside of course, other Unicode characters being added this year.

In The News

Children Are Using Emoji for Digital-Age Language Learning

I wanted to find out not only whether kids were texting emoji but which emoji, and why? How do they organize emoji into sequences and ideas, and how do these early ramblings shift as kids learn to read?

wired.com

Poop Emoji Reborn As Soft Serve Ice Cream

kotaku.com

 How We Apologize Now

Zara Rahim, who handled publicity for Vogue before joining The Wing, a women’s co-working space, as its communications director, said that the efficacy of these statements lies not only in their speed but also their appearance. “I can just write this quick note on my Notes app, because it looks like I did it on my phone, have my publicist take a quick glance at it, if I’m smart,” she said, “and then post it directly on my Instagram.”

nytimes.com

EMOJI CONFERENCE

May of this year will usher in Emoji 2019: 2nd​ International Workshop on Emoji Understanding and Applications in Social Media. Co-located with The Web Conference 2019 (formerly WWW)

Overall 2019 is going to give us some of the new emoji we have been waiting for. We will continue to learn and expand our understanding of these little symbols.

Emoji 2019 aims to stimulate research on understanding social, cultural, communicative, and linguistic roles of emoji and developing novel approaches to analyze, interpret and understand emoji and their usage in social media applications. It provides a forum to bring together researchers and practitioners from both academia and industry in the areas of social network analysis and mining, natural language processing, computational linguistics, human-computer interaction, and computational social sciences to discuss high-quality research and emerging applications, to exchange ideas and experience, and to identify new opportunities for collaboration.

We hope to see you there!

It’s World Emoji Day -July 17th!

to celebrate World Emoji Day, Apple has Swapped out the headshots of their top leaders with Memoji. You can see the new Apple executive’s Memojis here.

Another exciting event is the new Emojiland: The Musical, which is opening tonight for to celebrate World Emoji Day! Facebook has also joined the party and created a page dedicated to the internet holiday! And people all over the world are celebrating Emoji today in all kinds of ways!

Dr Who fans can guess at some Emoji Trivia

https://twitter.com/bbcdoctorwho/status/1019237144890667008

Department of Defense is tweeting about Emoji

https://twitter.com/DeptofDefense/status/1019189975907291136

And Subway wants a Sub Sandwich Emoji about as much as I want a sandwich (which is a lot)

The emoji the world needs #WorldEmojiDay pic.twitter.com/abb4ihaJcp

— SUBWAY® (@SUBWAY) July 17, 2018

The Library wants their own Emoji too!

Happy #WorldEmojiDay! Even though there’s no library emoji (yet), we’re still celebrating. How would you express the idea of a library using only emoji? #LibrariesTransform pic.twitter.com/6XvdXXmmqj

— American Library Association (@ALALibrary) July 17, 2018

And My favorite, NASA is even jumping on the Emoji Day festivities with a quiz!

https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1019223687701164037

Emojiland is a brand new musical about emojis living inside a smartphone. It’s part comedy, part tragedy, but all emoji. We first had the idea to make an emoji musical in May 2014, right around when Apple turned on the iPhone emoji keyboard by default… over a year before “The Emoji Movie” was announced. Some people get confused about that, so now you know!

Here is what critics are saying about Emojiland.

With Award winning director, Thomas Caruso directing and Hollywood darling, Keith Harrison on book and lyrics, this show is made for success. If you don’t believe us, just take a look at their promo video. If you like what you see then grab some tickets to the show!

Today we will decode the mystery of Snapchat’s Emoji Status!

Business Insider

Snapchat,  the company that’s logo looks remarkably similar to the Ghost Emoji, uses these “friend emojis,” to help you keep track of your relationships . They are pre-set for every user, but also they are customizable. However, it’s not always easy to tell what the emoji mean.

Here is the Emoji Foundation guide to the meanings behind every Snapchat emoji.

The gold heart is for best friends.

Apple/Business Insider

Snapchat says a gold heart next to someone’s name means you send the most snaps to this Snapchatter, and they send the most snaps to you, too.

The red heart Emoji means you have been each other’s No. 1 best friend for over two weeks.

Apple/Business Insider

Pink hearts Emoji means you have been each other’s No. 1 best friend for over two months.

Apple/Business Insider

A grimace Emoji means you share a best friend.

Apple/Business Insider

Your best friend is also this Snapchatter’s best friend.

A smiley face Emoji means this person is one of your best friends.

Apple/Business Insider

This isn’t your No. 1 best friend, but this is a Snapchatter you send a lot of snaps to.

The sunglasses Emoji means you share a close friend with this person. Why the glasses?

Apple/Business Insider

Smirking face Emoji means you’re their best friend, but they aren’t your best friend. Burn!

Apple/Business Insider

The Flame Emoji means you’re on a Snapstreak.

Apple/Business Insider

Snapstreaks are a score  that tracks how many consecutive days you’ve snapped back and forth with a friend on Snapchat.

The hourglass Emoji will appear to warn you that your Snapstreak will end soon. Keep Snapping- OR ELSE!

Apple/Business Insider

The cake Emoji means it’s your friend’s birthday.

Apple/Business Insider

The birthday cake will appear next to your friend’s name on the date they entered as their birthday on Snapchat.

The baby Emoji used to appear when you had first become Snapchat friends with someone.

Apple/Business Insider

Now the mystery of Snapchat Emoji is a mystery no more! #themoreyouknow

Nick Duska, host of the Right After Breakfast podcast interviews Emoji Foundation creator, Niki Selken

The Right After Breakfast podcast has one goal: help you discover your passions, merge them with your work, and create a lifestyle you love. Nick talks to an influential guest every week that shares their stories, lessons, and tips on how to accomplish just that.

During the interview, Niki uncovers her process in creating the Emoji Foundation and Emoji Dictionary as well as her latest Emoji project, Emoji Flower VR. Learn about Emoji in art, culture, and Emoji translation.  She will uncover the role of algorithms in out daily lives. ​You can download Niki interviewed on Right After Breakfast podcast here.

Niki Selken ‍ is the founder of Emoji Foundation and the creator of the Emoji Dictionary and VR game EmojiFlower VR. Her work focuses around  storytelling, games and interaction design. She is a resident artist and creative code teacher at in the Gray Area  where she is researching VR and AR. Niki attributes her intuitive understanding of the translation and meaning of Emoji to her extensive Japanese stationery collection and study of Japanese Butoh and Noh theater.  When she is not expanding her Emoji Empire she enjoys designing and playing games, Karaoke and of course, texting Emoji ❤️!

Apple today submitted an official proposal to the Unicode Consortium, requesting a greater variety of emoji representing people with disabilities.

The company says it wants to fill a gap in accessibility that exists in the emoji lexicon.

The emoji include an ear with a hearingaid, a person making the ASL sign for “deaf,” a person walking with a cane, people in two different wheelchairs, and two kinds of prosthetic limb. It also includes both a guide dog in a harness, and a service dog in a vest, with Apple explained each animal’s role and why it should be added to the growing list of Emoji.

The company developed the emoji in collaboration with the Cerebral Palsy Foundation, American Council of the Blind, the and the National Association of the Deaf. According to Emojipedia, these emoji, if approved, could be available as early as 2019.

Apple points out in the proposal that one in seven people has a disability of some kind, and that emoji should reflect this:

At Apple, we believe that technology should be accessible to everyone and should provide an experience that serves individual needs. Adding emoji emblematic to users’ life experiences helps foster a diverse culture that is inclusive of disability. Emoji are a universal language and a powerful tool for communication, as well as a form of self-expression, and can be used not only to represent one’s own personal experience, but also to show support for a loved one.

Right now, the only accessibility Emoji we have blue wheelchair icon , but that’s hardly a fair representation considering we’ve got everything else from ghosts to dragons to  the FOUR TYPES OF WHITE SQUARES  we currently have…

◻️▫️◽️⬜️

Apples says it doesn’t consider its proposed emoji to be “a comprehensive list of all possible depictions of disabilities, but to provide an initial starting point for greater representation for diversity within the emoji universe.” We at Emoji Foundation look forward to adding them to out Emoji Dictionary asap!

https://blog.emojipedia.org/apple-proposes-new-accessibility-emojis/ on Emojipedia

Celebrate emoji culture with like minded folk at Mystopias’s OMG Emoji! event at the Great Northern on Saturday, February 10th at 10 pm. The event features a full lineup of DJ’s, including NYC’s Salinger, and SF favorites DJ Brian, Bradley P, and more. Prizes, including a grand prize of $200 will be awarded for best costume.

Visit Emoji Foundation’s table to sample EmojiFlower VR, the world’s  first emoji-themed virtual reality game, currently available on the Apple Store. Created by Emoji Foundation director Niki Selken, EmojiFlower VR features delightful, 90’s inspired visuals and a 3D audio with original music by San Francisco musician Tim Vickers.

Can’t wait? Purchase Emojiflower VR, for use with Google Cardboard or other compatible virtual reality viewer here.

Mystopia is a nonprofit organization dedicated to designing inspired and dazzling experiences for the Burning Man community, and their friends, year round. Never been? OMG Emoji! is open to anyone and everyone who loves to dance and share their love of Emoji.

The Great Northern is located at 119 Utah Street, San Francisco. Tickets for OMG Emoji! are available on Eventbrite.

We have 157 new emoji such as:

Look for the  new Emoji 11.0 set to start showing up on mobile phones in August or September.

The man and woman emoji can now have various hair styles (red-haired, curly-haired, white-haired, and bald), and the new superhero and supervillain support genders and skin tones. The new leg and foot also support skin tones.

The new emoji are listed in Emoji Recently Added v11.0, with sample images. These images are just samples: vendors for mobile phones, PCs, and web platforms will typically use images that fit their overall emoji designs.