I absolutely love this style of storytelling!
Kolin Pope of the Washington Post uses claymation to illustrate the process of successfully proposing a new emoji, in this case the “person meditating” emoji.
He interviews Mark Bramhill, an audio producer and host of the podcast “Welcome to Macintosh,” who discovered that anyone can propose a new emoji in the middle of 2016 — and his mind immediately went wild with the possibilities.
At the time, the road from idea to emoji was not well-mapped. Bramhill soon realized that all paths led to the little-known global language standards organization that — somehow — found itself tasked with regulating emoji: the Unicode Consortium.
How To Propose An Emoji
These are the 15 steps you need to take to propose an emoji:
- Come up with an idea for an emoji
Do research to make sure it’s not already an emoji
- Ensure your emoji idea is not overly specific
E.G. Sushi is generic enough but a salmon nigiri is too specific
- Ensure your emoji idea has multiple uses
Can it be used non-literally?
- Ensure it doesn’t overlap with existing emoji
Don’t propose a new breed of dog, for example
- Don’t propose a logo, a brand or a real person
Copyright and trademark issues, obviously.
- Ensure your emoji idea is not a fad
Has it been around for a long time?
- Write a proposal for your emoji idea
Explain why your emoji deserves to be accepted
- Send your proposal to the Unicode Consortium’s emoji subcommittee
- Wait for a resonse
- If accepted, your proposal will be forwarded to the Unicode technical committee
- Wait for a response
- You may be invited to argue your proposal in person
If so, pitch your idea
- Wait for a response
If accepted, each platform will decide how to draw their own verison of your emoji
- Wait for the next emoji update
Look for your emoji
- Celebrate!
Emoji Resources
- Unicode Consortium: Submitting Emoji Character Proposals
- Emojipedia
- Emoji Foundation
- World Emoji Day
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