Why Unicode emoji isn’t (and shouldn’t be) a reliable communication mechanism

I often hear a particular undercurrent of attitudes or beliefs when I hear various discussions about Unicode codepoints and Unicode emoji symbols, and to me, as an illustrator and a designer (ie. a visual communicator), and someone who is trying to navigate their place in the world of languages, I find that these attitudes usually come from a place of privilege, and/or a lack of knowledge about how graphic communication actually works.

I think the notion that Unicode Emoji is something that can be permanent, stable and reliable, doesn’t make sense and isn’t realistic. And even if you could make it that way, that’s not a situation anyone should actually want.

 

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0.3.0 sketches

A medium gray area with some black text. On the top right, there is bold text that says 'お前お殺す！Testy test test', on the left there are 3 rows of text. (1) Three chunks of text in a row in condensed, normal and wide fonts, and they say 'Condensed', 'Normal' and 'Thicc' respectively. (2), written notes that points to somewhere off to the left side of the picture and says 'This approach', (3) '1234567890'.

Endless, endless testing.

 

0.3.0 was partly a new emoji update, but also just trying to tie up more loose ends for the future. I wanted to be super-satisfied with various core elements of the aesthetic and design philosophy so I could move on with bigger changes and more new emoji without feeling like I have things left behind or unresolved design issues.

It also means that updating Telegram sticker sets and merch would be easier because existing designs won’t keep continually changing from version to version.

 

I was not prepared for how many sketches I had to publish for this.

 

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