popular science

emoji

64 POPULAR SCIENCE

© EM OJIONE

hese images look like wasn’t actually up to them, that it was

p to Apple and Google and the others.

DANIEL:There arediferences in how we render them.

Apple’s emoji are highly rendered and realistic. Google’s are

more illustrative and playful. The circles, for example, aren’tt

erfect circles. They’re kind of squishy and soft. But that

oftnesshelpsbecauseitmakes theillustrationsfriendlier.

ELLY:We wanted to physically go down there. We put out aa

all for redheads. A group of them went to Apple headquarteers

nd delivered the signatures in a carrot-shaped USB drive.

APPLE INC.:Did not respond to multiple requestsfor commennt.

ELLY:Ofcourse, Apple being Apple, wehave notheard

nythingfrom them. Someonehas gotit somewhere there.

DANIEL:Ultimately, vendors like Google are at the mercy of

what Unicode passes andfails. The amount of emoji being

dded everyyear, and which are added, is really up to them.

EE:We want to slowlyratchetitupasopposed todumping

hem all at the same time. Fifty to 70 per year is a good target.

UNT:The process starts withaproposal.Ifyou want a

ew emoji to go into the Unicode standard so everyone in

heworldcan useit, you need to create a report. Unicode

rovidesatemplate, whichisonits website.

ENENSON:I think it’s kind of a bar for people who care

bout submitting emoji that shows they’re putting thought

nto whether it should really be an emoji. Adding that little

itof processhelps weed out unserious people.

EE:It’s really not that hard to create a good proposal. If you

id reasonably well in high school, you could igure this out.

’s the level of a high school lab report.

ENENSON:If it’s a food-related emoji like the oyster, you

ave to take screenshots of Google search results on oyster

ersus hamburger to show that it’s popular.

ELLY:I thought it was crazy that I had to do a proposal. It

was so obvious that the ginger emoji should be there. So, as

form ofprotest, I refused to do theproposal.

EE:It’s not like the emoji subcommittee is rejecting

roposals willy-nilly.

VERSON:The committee did delete the frowning pile of

oo as a candidate. I made a lot of noise about that. Propo-

ents cited reasons such as,“We need this because what if

ou had digestive issues and wanted to text your proctol-

gist.” Can you not use words? Do you have to send your

octor a picture? What is wrong with you people?

CHAHAPTER FOUR

Let t there be gingers!

On Januaryy 17, 2017, emoji subcommittee vice chair Jeremy

Burge, citing soccial-media and online buzz, submitted a proposalmitted a prop

summarising the grouroup’s options for addadding redhead emoji. Gin-

gers were still far from oicicial U. Unicode would spend more than a

year debating how to implplement the hair-colour change.

HUNT:We have qquarterly Unicode technical committee

meetings. That’at’s where we’ll decide which emoji will

progress, howw they will be implemented, and what the

mechanismms will be.

LEE:Thee meetings are so long—it’s like C-SPAN but with

emoji. IIt’s four weeklong meetings, and emoji are between one

and two hours a day for the irst four days. With the ginger, we

had too go back to the drawing board three or four times.

HUNTT:Part of why itwasadiicultproblem was that there

weremany ways this thing could be handled.

LEE:YYou want a bagel emoji? OK, let’s make an emoji that

looks like a bagel. But the ginger—it’s not straightforward.

What arre we coding? Redheads could be old, babies, boys,

girls. Hoow do you approach that? Modiier characters are

used in onnly one situation: skin tone.

MARK DAVISS,lead internationalisation architect, Google;

president and coco-founder, Unicode Consortium:Chang-

ing the architectuure by adding more modifiers typically

requires code changnges that might be difficult to retrofit to

older devices.

You want a bagel emoji?

OK, let’s make an emoji that

looks like a bagel.

But the ginger—it’s not

straightforward. What

are we coding?

Jennifer 8. Lee