Expanding the Emoji-verse

The World Emoji Day was celebrated just recently, on July 17. Jeremy Burge, the creator of Emojipedia, was the one who started the tradition in 2014. Even though the phenomenon is barely a few years ago, its impact on not only our lives, but the very essence of human communication, has been phenomenal. Over the past few years, emojis have evolved from just expressing basic human emotions to communicating ‘virtually’ everything. People have taken to their usage, if not over-usage, while chatting on every social-media platform, be it Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or another. After all, these graphical symbols are there to help us wherever words fall shor, or lethargy prevails. One might as well consider emojis to be the universal language.

The anniversary brings an interesting new development into the fore: Apple and Google have just revealed plans to introduce brand-new emojis this year. Among them, it is Apple who shared the details of its new emojis, which the tech giant will be launching for all iOS devices this fall.

The new set will include many new additions, be it emotive smiley faces, gender-neutral characters, professions that were not previous represented, a wide variety of clothing types, kinds of food, animals, mythical creatures and more. In fact, very specific things have been included in the new set. Some cases in point include a yawning smiling face, foods such as waffle, butter, garlic, and even falafel, and animals such as the sloth, flamingo, orangutan and skunk.

Apple's new emojis will be an update with iOS devices, while Google's new emojis will be available on the upcoming Android Q. Both companies are bringing around 60 new emojis this year. Therefore, if you thought that, somehow, the graphical tool fell short in expressing what you wish to communicate, the chance of that is now even lesser. So, what’s next? Abstract concepts expressed through emojis?