The History of the Emoji
From the Beginning
Long before the emojis we all know today, the original emoticon which was made up of typographical art, which ultimately started the trend of “internet-speak”. First published in the magazine titled Puck, faces with different emotions were created using different characters and punctuation marks.
Although there is not one definite date where the modern day emojis appeared, many believe it was in 1997. The most acknowledged emojis are the ones created by Shigetaka Kurita, in 1999, all 176 characters exclusively for the mobile carrier called DOCOMO.
This emoji set for DOCOMO set off a major rise in competitors, ultimately leading to Apple including a emoji set within their keyboards starting in 2011. Soon after, Android released that they were also including a emoji keyboard.
Progressive Change
Emojis started off as very discriminatory to people of color as well as women. In 2014, “people began noticing that all of the emoji representing work—a policeman, a detective, a school teacher, a construction worker—were all white men. As important as emoji was in depicting the language of the day, it was a language that apparently did not include women or people of color. Unicode was listening and, in 2015, they offered the ability to change skin tone and made emoji of women doing many different types of things.”
Although they have made efforts to be more inclusive, there are still those who feel unrepresented. These users wish for areas such as race, ethnicity, age, and culture to be more representative. some users believe that “emojis could spark positive conversations about important cultural and societal issues. Users were also most delighted to see gender- and culture-inclusive emojis like a person feeding a baby, bubble tea and a person in a tuxedo”.
If you wish to recommend a new emoji, or to make a pre-existing emoji customizable, one is able to contact the unicode standard system and make a case to the unicode consortium.
https://www.collecteurs.com/article/a-brief-history-of-emoji