Behind the Scenes: How New Emojis Are Designed and Approved
🧠💡✍️ From Brainstorm to Your Thumbs
Every emoji begins as a twinkle in someone’s digital eye.
Not literally, of course. But before that avocado 🥑 ever nestled into your keyboard—or that melting face 🫠 slid its way into your group chats—it started as a pitch, a prayer, and a PDF. Yes, folks, the modern hieroglyphics we sling across texts like confetti don’t just appear magically. There’s a whole bureaucratic ballet behind them—equal parts creativity, committee, and caffeine.
Welcome to the emoji underworld.
Act I: The Spark – Where Ideas Are Born 🔥
It all starts with a spark. Maybe someone thinks we need a shaking head emoji to express our shared existential dread. Or perhaps the glaring lack of a pink heart (finally added in 2023!) has become an emotional emergency.
Who decides what the world needs? You do. Kind of. Anyone—yes, literally anyone—can submit an emoji proposal to the Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit wizardry board behind the scenes. Think of them as the emoji gatekeepers, the same folks who keep every “😂” and “🙏” functioning across platforms.
But submitting an emoji isn’t just throwing spaghetti at a digital wall. Oh no. It’s more like applying to emoji Harvard. You’ll need a full-blown proposal—complete with a name, justification for usage, evidence of popularity potential (Google Trends and Twitter stats, anyone?), and even a proposed design.
Yes, you have to show your work. This isn’t emoji finger painting.
Act II: The Gauntlet – Unicode’s Emoji Hunger Games 🎯
Once your proposal makes it past the velvet ropes, it enters the hallowed chambers of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee. Picture a group of people from Apple, Google, Facebook, and more, sitting around a virtual roundtable like emoji knights of the digital realm.
They evaluate proposals like picky restaurant critics. Does the emoji represent something unique? Is it inclusive? Will it be used broadly across languages, cultures, and texting temperaments? No one wants an emoji that lives and dies in one subculture’s group chat.
Designs are debated. Relevance is ranked. And sometimes, heartbreak ensues. Many emojis never make it past the cutting board. (RIP, “Toaster Oven.” Yes, that was a real proposal.)
It’s a process that’s oddly similar to pitching a new feature on a platform like 20Bet Vietnam, where even the tiniest detail must pass through layers of scrutiny before it’s added to the user experience.
But the lucky few that make it? Oh, they’re crowned royalty.
Act III: The Digital Debut – Release and Glory 📲👑
Once Unicode gives the green light, the real fun begins. Tech giants—Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, etc.—take the approved concept and turn it into their own art style. That’s why a “turtle” might look wise and sleepy on one phone and slightly confused on another.
Then comes the rollout. Updates drop. Phones buzz. And before you know it, people everywhere are sending 🫃 (pregnant man) to their group chats, whether to spark conversation, confusion, or just pure emoji mischief.
The emoji becomes canon. It is now immortal.
The Emoji Future – A Language Always Evolving 📚✨
You might think emojis are silly. You might think they’re just sprinkles on the linguistic cupcake. But they are language. They carry nuance, emotion, irony, and inside jokes. They cross borders faster than slang, speak volumes without vowels, and tell our shared story, one tiny image at a time.
And behind every new emoji? A dreamer. A proposal. A committee of digital scribes. And a world that, believe it or not, still wants new ways to say “I’m tired” without typing it out.
So next time you fire off a 🥹 or a 🐙, remember: someone somewhere fought the good fight to bring that emoji into existence. Pitched it. Argued for it. Dressed it in pixels.
Because even in the age of AI, we still need tiny pictures to say what words sometimes can’t.
And thank goodness for that. 💬❤️🫶