How those smiley faces and cute mice come to life
Head of nonprofit responsible for emojis explains it
SAN FRANCISCO — An estimated 74 percent of Americans use emojis every day. We use them in text messages, Facebook posts and whenwe chat online.
Yet, despite our avid use of the smiley faces, animal icons and poop emojis, few people know where emojis come from. Who designs them? Who decides which new emojis get added each year? Can anyone suggest an emoji?
Answers to these questions were provided by Mark Davis, president and co-founder of the Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit Silicon Valley group responsible for emojis, among many other things. In addition to running the Unicode Consortium, Davis is also an internationalization engineer at Google.
The following interview has been edited and condensed.
Q: When you say the Unicode Consortium is responsible for emojis, what does that mean?
A: Our main focus is supporting the languages of the world, such as Chinese characters, Japanese characters, Cyrillic letters and others. We have roughly 7,000 characters slated for release this year, and roughly 70 are emoji.
Q: How many emojis are there today?
A: 1,624.
Q: Who gets to suggest emojis or decide which ones the consortium will approve?
A: Anyone can propose an emoji character, but they have to make a solid case for it. The process and timeline are described on Unicode emoji website. It’s more than just saying, “Well, I think there should be a drunken chipmunk emoji.” You have to give us some good reasons that would establish why it would be a successful and valuable addition. You also have to provide an image in black and white and in
color of what it could look like.
Q: What are the criteria?
A: We don’t accept emoji for persons living or fictional, deities, business logos or anything strongly connected to a particular business product.
We look at the expected frequency that the emoji is going to be used. That’s a very strong factor. We also look at whether it’s needed to flesh out an existing set. For example, we have silverware, butwe don’t yet have chopsticks.
Q: How does the approval process work?
A: The consortium is made up of members who have voting powers, and there are around a dozen people on the emoji subcommittee who parse through the submissions. They come from all around the world and have different backgrounds. We operate by consensus, and we forward proposals to the technical committee.