Today World Emoji Daya day when the power of this fundamental graphic for non-verbal communication on digital platforms is celebrated. Substitutes for human gesturesare powerful resources for contextualizing and clarifying aspects that text-only messages sometimes fail to convey. Don’t you think that without these images and their various meanings, communication on apps and social networks would be incomplete?
The annual festival debuted in 2014 and has been celebrated on July 17 ever since. Apple is partly “to blame,” said Jeremy Burge, the movement’s promoter and founder of the Emojipedia website, in an interview with Emojipedia. New York Times What He chose this coordinate because this is the date that is displayed in the iOS calendar emoji.“I was surprised to learn that there are special days for donuts. Croissants and other festivals. And there were no graphics like the ones we use every day,” Burge said years later in a dialogue with an Argentine newspaper. Clarion.
The creator of Emojipedia, who was also part of the Unicode consortium, the standard in this world, is without a doubt one of human heroes on this day. This is not the only case. On World Emoji Day 2024, the figure Jennifer Daniel, the queen of graphics, who celebrates her special day todayWe invite you to get to know it.
Jennifer Daniel, an artist who creates and manipulates digital gestures
Jennifer’s LinkedIn profile greets us with a brief description. Under her photo it says “designer” and the city she lives in is New York. Those who know her also know that she queen of smiles. Looking through her resume, we found out that she joined Google as a designer in 2016 and has been the company’s creative director since 2023. One of their main tasks, if not the main one, is to develop and propose new emoji options.
Daniel is also the head of the Emoji Subcommittee at Unicode.. For the unsuspecting, it is a non-profit organization that decides which symbols, characters, and signs appear on the keyboards of major digital services. Also, as we noted earlier in Hypertextthis is where emojis come from. They are responsible for making sure that the text and graphics are legible and accessible to all users.
On World Emoji Day, many of us might think that creating emojis is a fun and always enjoyable activity. But in a conversation with the magazine Technology Review from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Daniel admitted that his job is not idyllic“I’m constantly researching and consulting with different experts. I’ll talk to a botanical garden on the phone about flowers, or a whale expert to get the whale emojis right, or a cardiovascular surgeon to learn about the anatomy of the heart,” he said.
“80% of our communication is nonverbal,” notes Jennifer Daniel.
Well versed in this matter, Daniel emphasizes the importance of emojis in our on-screen links. In this sense, he notes that “80% of our communication is non-verbal” in a face-to-face conversation. The specialist refers to sighs, body gestures, movements and glances that meet and avoid, to name just a few examples. On digital platforms – for example, in a message sent via WhatsApp – emoticons replace these stimuli.
«When emoji first came out, we had the misconception that they were ruining language.“Learning a new language is really hard, and these graphics are like a new language,” Daniel noted in the aforementioned interview. “When we talk to someone and look them in the eye, you change your body language, and it’s emotional contagion. It creates empathy and connection. It gives you permission to reveal that about yourself. Emojis can do that, all in one image,” the relevant figure added on World Emoji Day.
It is worth noting that Daniel is the first woman to chair the Unicode subcommittee responsible for emoji. His presence at the helm of this group was key to adding inclusive and thoughtful emojis. One of the suggestions he used to support his position was that of Mx. Claus, an alternative to the binary representation of Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus. He also added others, such as a male face with a veil or the face of a genderless person breastfeeding a child.
During his professional career, Daniel has also worked for publications such as: New York Times And New Yorker.
World Emoji Day: 5 Facts and Curiosities About Digital Gesture Emblems
- The term “emoji” comes from Japanese. It is a combination of words in that language for “picture” and “letter”. or “character”. Makes sense.
- On World Emoji Day, it is interesting to dwell on the cyclical nature of human history. As the site notes International Day, Thousands of years ago, drawings were used for expression and communication.which was tested on the walls of caves. Emoticons partially restore this tradition.
- As we previously reported, these emblems of non-verbal communication were created in the last century, more precisely in 1997. That was when designer Shigetaka Kurita released the first example and the subsequent 175 models. He was inspired by road signs and Japanese manga.
- It’s much more than just faces. Nowadays, There are over 3,500 variations of emoji. Unicode is approved. According to Jennifer Daniel, the process from proposal to implementation of a new instance takes about two years. And about three dozen are added each year.
- Which of the extensive list is used most often? The answer may surprise you: it’s not the famous smilebut from Red heart.
“Emojis are unstoppable, just like language. You can combine them to create incredible things without words,” concludes Daniel of a phenomenon that has been going on for years. This new World Emoji Day celebration is another example of the power these graphs that express themselves without words.
Source: Hiper Textual
I am Garth Carter and I work at Gadget Onus. I have specialized in writing for the Hot News section, focusing on topics that are trending and highly relevant to readers. My passion is to present news stories accurately, in an engaging manner that captures the attention of my audience.
