With everyone from Blac Chyna to Steph Curry coming up with their own popular emojis, the original emoji providers are stepping up their game. The Unicode Consortium — aka Emoji Headquarters — officially unveiled 72 new emojis this week, scheduled for delivery later this month.
Mock-ups of the new emojis, from Emojipedia.
I’m impressed by the quick turnaround, because, in the past, it took ages to get new emojis. For example, people were begging for a middle finger from Day One of emoji popularity. Out of desperation, in 2013, I created my own emoji-like middle finger-earring (inspired by Eminem’s famous bird-flip) and reached out to Unicode saying, “You guys can use this for free … just do something already!”
My sterling silver middle finger emoji stud earring.
No answer. In 2014, Unicode finally promised a middle finger and over 200 other emojis, which didn’t hit phones till 2015. (To be fair, Apple and other providers share responsibility for that. Unicode can create the emojis but can’t add them to other companies’ operating systems.)
That 2015 update also included the “sign of the horns” emoji, which I introduced as an earring in 2013 …
Click for my original post on the earring
… and the Vulcan salute, another two-year-old earring design for me.
Click to live long and prosper.
When I wrote about that 2015 update I said:
Sure enough, the crossed fingers emoji is finally coming. Here it is, next to my 2013 earring version.
A “call me” gesture is expected too.
Via Emojipedia.
At first glance, I thought that was the shaka sign, but Emojipedia says this is “not to be confused with the sign of the horns or the shaka sign (which does not yet have an emoji representation).” Oh, but the shaka does have an unofficial emoji presentation!
Another one of my 2013 designs. Click to purchase.
Unicode has listed some tentative candidates for a 2017 emoji release. I know my handsome friend Seth, a curling enthusiast, will appreciate the curling stone.
Via Unicode.
I suggest that Unicode add the American Sign Language sign for “I love you.” I introduced that as an earring three years ago, and it’s one of my most popular emoji-inspired pieces, second only to the middle finger.
Click to purchase.
If you’ve read this blog for a while, I bet you’re not at all surprised that my customers say “fuck you” more than “I love you”!
By the way, if you want more risque and hilarious emojis, the Kimojis from Kim Kardashian are awesome. To use those, you download the Kimoji app and copy and paste the Kimojis into your texts. Unfortunately, they don’t work on Twitter. That makes me sad.
Kim’s infamous crying face.
If I could use the Kimojis on Twitter, I might never use a Unicode emoji again!
