There's no doubt about it: communication is constantly evolving, and like the days of cavemen, communicating through pictures (aka emojis) has again become commonplace.
In conjunction with World Emoji Day on July 17 (who knew there was such a thing?!), Apple teased more than a dozen new emojis that will reportedly be available to users of iOS, macOS and watchOS later this year. With the new emoji additions, we will at last be able to adequately communicate regarding the subjects of puke, meditation, genies, zombies, elves, zebras, sandwiches (finally!), coconuts, and dinosaurs, among others. *Mind = Blown* [caption id="attachment_19841" align="aligncenter" width="271"]
Image courtesy of Apple[/caption]
The process for adding emojis to the collection is surprisingly complex. There's actually an organization whose sole purpose is figuring that stuff out: the Unicode Consortium is a nonprofit in charge of setting the global standard for emoji characters.
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Image courtesy of Apple[/caption]
They approved 69 new symbols this year, and now it's in the hands of software designers (like Apple or Google) to come up with their own versions of those approved characters, hence Apple's teaser. There are currently 2,666 approved emojis.
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Courtesy of Apple[/caption]
Google is also in the midst of designing the newly-approved characters for their Android platform, along with rethinking the look of hundreds of existing emojis that had been criticized for looking like melted marshmallows.
Apple is expected to include the new emojis with their new iOS update and iPhone, which are usually released in September.
What do you think of the new emojis? Is there an emoji character that you wish existed? We'd love to hear your excellent emoji ideas in the comments!