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Emoji Design Convergence Review: 2018-2026

by surprisetalk on 1/27/2026, 4:39:27 PM

https://blog.emojipedia.org/emoji-design-convergence-review-2018-2026/

Comments

by: contagiousflow

With the Iran example, it's an interesting world we live in where the design of an emoji by some of the largest companies in the world can support or detract recognition of new states. Especially with some of these tech companies bending the knee to the current US administration I could imagine a world where there are executive orders to say, remove the Greenland flag, or change the design of the Venezuela flag.

1/30/2026, 5:13:22 PM


by: xcf_seetan

As someone that used the original emotes, all this graphics emojis just don't make any sense. There are just too many, and i have to lookup what they mean in isolation and try to dig what they mean in sequence... I dont have the context the user had when he constructed the sequence of emojis and i cant understand what they are trying to communicate, at this point it is easier to just say the words.

1/30/2026, 5:27:19 PM


by: codethief

&gt; Described as &quot;emoji fragmentation&quot; by some, it was clear that various emoji vendors&#x27; designs were highly inconsistent with one another, often leading to embarrassing miscommunications.<p>I&#x27;ve said it before and I&#x27;ll say it again: I still don&#x27;t understand why anyone thought standardizing emojis as Unicode code points (without defining what <i>exactly</i> they should look like, i.e. leaving the glyphs almost entirely up to the font &amp; UI&#x2F;UX designers) was a good idea. I mean, it&#x27;s not like facial expressions on their own are not already difficult enough to decipher, they had to add even more ambiguity by letting each app designer choose different glyphs? It&#x27;s incredibly easy for the tone and meaning of a text message to change depending on what its emojis look like.

1/30/2026, 4:57:10 PM


by: ashton314

I wonder how hard some folks ant Apple had to work to keep Alan Dye away from the Emoji design.

1/30/2026, 4:50:55 PM