About a year ago, professional yo-yoist (and hand-knit Pac-Man Icelandic peysa wearer) Doc Pop submitted a proposal for a yo-yo emoji. He's just learned that it was approved!

He explains how he made it happen (fascinating!) in his most recent PopCast:

Last year I started working on a proposal for a yo-yo emoji, with the helps of my friends at Emojination. It’s been an interesting experience and I’m really excited to say that it’s been officially accepted by the Unicode Consortium. Expect to see it in Unicode version 12, early next year.

Here's what the yo-yo emoji will look like:

You can submit an emoji proposal too. Check it out. Read the rest

Emojipedia notes that with Twitter's adoption of David Bowie-like figures for its singer emojis, the British pop legend lives on as such on four major platforms: Apple, Google, Microsoft and Twitter.

The only other easily-identified star is Prince, as used by WhatsApp.

Bowie- and Prince-inspired characters are used for both man and woman singer emojis.

Facebook, Samsung and others use generic (or at least less identifiable) characters, because they are boring. Read the rest

The Gourmand magazine commissioned Matthieu Lavanchy to create some of the most popular food emojis from the real thing. The whole project feels a bit like a modern update of Magritte's The Treachery of Images. Read the rest

When life hands you shit, make poop emoji brownies. YouTuber Rosanna Pansino shows you how.

First you're going to need one (or more) of her 6-cavity poop swirl treat molds.

Then you'll need to follow the recipe, which is here:

"Ta-Doo-Doo! Poo never smelled so good!"

After seeing a news article, emoji expert Keith Broni of Dublin, Ireland answered a job posting by London-based language firm Today Translations searching for the world's first emoji translator. After a lengthy process, the firm choose Broni out of a pool of over 500 candidates last month.

Broni writes,

"I sent in my application pretty much immediately... There is no doubt that emoji are powerful communicative tools, enabling emotional expression and understanding particularly where there might be traditional language barriers. However, we know that not every culture interprets the same emoji in the same way. By helping companies and organisations understand those differences, I plan to make a real difference in the world of global communication.”

Part of his duties will include writing an "Emoji Etiquette Guide," consulting on the use of emojis in marketing, and analyzing emojis in a legal context.

Previously: Emojis are like modern-day gargoyles to this Dutch architect Read the rest

My favorite witch, Pam Grossman, editor of the phantastic art and occult blog, Phantasmaphile, and author of What is a Witch, has recently released WitchEmoji, a new messaging sticker pack for iPhone.

The set offers 80 stickers in all, including the typical tools of spellcraft, symbols and sigils, and male and female witches of various skin tones. Pam created the set, with the help of icon illustrator Julia Heffernan, because she wanted to invoke more witchy symbolism in her mobile missives and there weren't many existing stickers that fit the bill.

The response to the set has been extremely positive and Pam says she'd like to expand to Android and elsewhere. Given the success of the Apple set, I imagine we'll be seeing emoji-based spellcasting coming to other phones sooner than later.

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In 1999, Shigetaka Kurita created 176 digital icons that fit in a 12x12 pixel grid. Pagers, then cell phones, then smartphones ran with the emoji concept. Now MoMA is acquiring the original set, and MoMA's Paul Galloway will be discussing the collection at Emojicon this week. Read the rest

If you send a smiling emoji to your friend, it might appear as a grimace on their device.

Hannah Miller, a third-year Ph.D. student in the GroupLens research lab at the University of Minnesota, and her colleagues are publishing a study that found that the "problem can cause people to misinterpret the emotion and the meaning of emoji-based communication, in some cases quite significantly."

Read the rest