Today, emoji is an integral part of expression. Be it a formal or informal letter, a chat on social media platforms, or even a personal message. Emoji speaks louder than words as it expresses exactly what you want to say in just one symbol. And hence not surprisingly, it is so popular among all generations. Gone are the days when elder people used to think that it was just a millennial messaging fad.
As of now, it is more like a language, a very primitive one that expresses tiny yet highly emotive characters. These emotive expressions first appeared in the very late 90s on Japanese mobile phones and since then have been the hallmark of the way web users across the world communicate.
Earlier they were only considered a fad. But after the Oxford Dictionaries included Emoji 😂 as “Word of the Year” in 2015 it sort of became officially accepted worldwide. It also established that emoji are not for a particular generation but for everyone.
Emoji is the latest term. But when the idea sparked first, they were considered or called emoticons. And these emoticons could be anything on your keyboard meant to express what exactly you are feeling without using words from known languages around the globe. For example, many colleagues conveyed sarcasm during discussions using ;-) or using other expressions such as ¯_(ツ)_/¯ to express different feelings.
But it was Japanese artist Shigetaka Kurita who created the first ever authentic emoji in 1999. He created it while working with his development team for a very early internet mobile platform “i-mode” for the main mobile carrier from Japan called DOCOMO. He intended to come up with a very attractive design interface for conveying information in a succinct and simple way.
That is how Kurita prepared a batch of 176 original emoji which are now a permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. These are the privileged face symbols that DOCOMO wanted to use for expressing information in a new way. And now an entire family of emoji is available for netizens for expressing themselves with designers adding more symbols and designs to this already big family of emoji.