Where Do Emojis Come From?

With the rise of platform culture and the reality of being “always online”, younger generations in particular have helped recodify online language to emphasize speed and ease of expression by using slang, shorthand, and emojis to communicate. Indeed, studies estimate that over 90% of people now use emojis in some capacity. This is why new emojis like the taco, the rainbow flag, or more recently, diverse skin tones and gender options, are frequently being added. But who decides this? Where do emojis come from exactly?

The word emoji comes from the Japanese e (meaning “picture”) and moji (meaning “character”). Emojis were first developed in Japan in the late 80s and 90s for use on mobile devices, and they quickly spread worldwide as texting and online communication became more popular. Unlike regular images, emojis are actually part of the Unicode Standard, a system that assigns a unique code to every text character and symbol so that they can be represented consistently across different platforms and languages. This means when you text an emoji like a smiley face to a friend, what you're really doing is transmitting a code that your friend’s phone is able to interpret and display as the intended emoji. 

But if emojis adhere to a global standard, how do we get new ones? The Unicode Standard is maintained by the Unicode Consortium, a conglomerate of major tech companies (Adobe, Apple, Google, Microsoft), individual experts, and smaller organizations that was founded in 1991. These members work closely with international standards bodies like ISO and IEC to keep Unicode synchronized with global standards, as well as collaborate to decide on updates to the Unicode Standard, including the addition of new characters and emojis. So, if someone has an idea for a new emoji, they can submit a proposal to the consortium.

Technically, anyone can submit a proposal for a new emoji, but the process is detailed and requires justification. Proposals are evaluated based on factors such as expected usage, distinctiveness, and compatibility with existing emojis. Once approved, the new emoji is added to the Unicode Standard, and companies then create their own designs to represent it. This is why emojis may look different across devices; it’s also why you might see new emojis roll out at different times. Unicode defines the meaning of each emoji but does not dictate its exact appearance. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other companies design their own versions of the same emoji, and thus a laughing face may look slightly different on an iPhone compared to an Android device.