The word Emoji is something every millennial is familiar with and considers an important part of their lives. They use emojis while having phone conversations, sending messages, and even while expressing their mood or how they feel. Gone are those days where people express their emotions through words on a paper or through voice. Because of the way people communicate has changed, there is an emoji for almost every expression of emotion that you go through. Feeling sad? There are an array of emoticons. Feeling happy? You can express how much with a simple tap on the phone. There are thousands of emojis that help you show not only what or how you feel, but also objects flags and other things that we represent in our interactions. It is no surprise if you are wondering as to how emojis exactly came into existence. Well, let us take a brief look at the history of emojis or where they all began.
How the present-day Emojis came to be
Emojis did not come into existence until a few years ago. There were emoticons, in the beginning, that is, the 1990’s. Emotions were expressed in the form of different characters on the keyboard out together, say, for example, 🙂 represented a smile, 🙁 represented sad, 😀 represented happy, and so on. Emoticons included icons to represent traffic, weather, time, and technology.
The first-ever Emoji was created in 1999 by a Japanese artist as a part of his job in which he wanted to show an attractive interface to convey information in a simple way to mobile users. So he sketched a set of 12×12 pixel images which could be easily selected from the keyboard-like grid. However, these characters were not able to provide complete information.
Emoticons further took an update in 2010, and hundreds of more of them came into the picture including cat faces showing different expressions on their face such as anger, happiness, and tears.
In the year 2015, emojis got a diversity update to them with new skin tones and a set of same-sex couples. More emojis such as pride flag, single dad, weightlifting woman and more were added to the collection the following year.
Their recent update took place in the year 2017, which added more set of emojis to the large collection. These included different types of food, mythical creatures, faces, and animals. With this, the emoji vocabulary is complete with an emoji for every expression or information you want to share.
The way millennials express is very different from how people used to back then before emojis existed. There are several ways to show them, like wearing t-shirts with Emoji, earrings, studs, shoes, hair accessories, and, nowadays, even buttons. Yes, you heard it right. You can now get customized accessories with your favourite Emoji on it and wear it anywhere you go. How trendy, right! Everbtn is one such company that manufactures easy-to-wear buttons that you can simply attach to your shirts and go about your day. They are available in various types such as flags, emojis, and so on. You can also get a customized set with the icons of your choice printed on them.
Emojis are insightful for understanding and learning the increasing importance of technology is playing in the way we communicate with our family, friends, loved ones, and others; basically human communication in general. As we move forward with technology, the means of expressing feelings and emotions are vast, and we have the freedom to express our emotions. Which way would you choose to express in relation to the trends?
