The tiny smiley faces, hearts, knife-and-fork or clenched fist have become a global language for mobile phone messages, changing the way we communicate.
They are displayed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and even star in a new Hollywood film.
Now the man who created them when he was a 25 year old employee at Japanese mobile phone carrier NTT DoCoMo has revealed how he came up with them.
Pictured, Director Shigetaka Kurita writes a pictograph during an interview at his office in Tokyo. The Japanese creator of the first emoji wanted to add nuance to mobile phone messages and never imagined his 1999 work would become a global phenomenon
The emoji is heir to a tradition of pictographic writing stretching back millennia to Egyptian hieroglyphics and the ideograms used to write Chinese and Japanese.
Despite their ubiquity, they started in 1998 with one man: A 25-year-old employee of mobile phone carrier NTT DoCoMo who created the first set of 176 in one month as he rushed to meet a deadline.
‘I happened to arrive at the idea. If I hadn’t done it, someone else would have,’ said Shigetaka Kurita, who now is a board member at Dwango Co., a Tokyo technology company.
Kurita’s challenge: NTT DoCoMo’s ‘i-mode’ mobile internet service limited messages to 250 characters, which cried out for some kind of shorthand.
A message that said, ‘What are you doing now?’ could be menacing or nosey, but adding a smiley face softened the tone.
‘Digital messaging was just getting started, and so I was thinking about what was needed,’ said Kurita.
Following i-mode’s launch in 1999, that nuance made emoji an immediate hit in Japan, where the demands of courtesy make for a complex art and a tiny mistake can prove costly.
Emoji combines the Japanese for ‘picture,’ or ‘e” (pronounced ‘eh’), and ‘letters,’ or ‘moji’ (moh-jee).
‘I happened to arrive at the idea. If I hadn’t done it, someone else would have,’ said Shigetaka Kurita, who now is a board member at Dwango Co., a Tokyo technology company
Kurita’s challenge: NTT DoCoMo’s ‘i-mode’ mobile internet service limited messages to 250 characters, which cried out for some kind of shorthand. Pictured above, the creator writes a pictograph of a heart
Kurita collected common images including public signs, weather symbols, the zodiac and comic book-style pictures such as a light bulb or a ticking bomb.
With simple lines, he made five faces – happy, angry, sad, surprised and perplexed.
The heart and a smiley face are still his favorites.
Some visuals transcend culture.
A drop of sweat rolling down a cheek means exasperation or anxiety. Others confuse: A camcorder was misread by many as a fish.
The tiny smiley faces, hearts, knife-and-fork or clenched fist have become a global language for mobile phone messages. Despite their ubiquity, they started in 1998 with one man. Emoji have since been adopted by Unicode
‘Japanese tend to excel at making the most of limitations.
It’s a nation filled with limitations, a small piece of land,’ said Kurita.
‘We do well at carrying out tasks within a framework, rather than being given a free hand.’
Western players Apple and Google made emoji a global phenomenon.
‘Perhaps because of the popularity of the iPhone, Apple’s art style for its emojis also became extremely influential, to the point that when most people think of emoji imagery, they’re thinking of Apple’s take on it,’ said Jason Snell, a tech journalist and podcaster.
THE 67 NEW EMOJI CANDIDATES FOR 2018
Coming soon: The 67 new emoji expected to appear on phones next year. The list includes body parts (like a bone, leg, and foot), animals (like a peacock, kangaroo, and hippo) as well as a frowning variation of the famed poo emoji
Smiling Face With Cape
Serious Face With Eye Mask And Cape
Face With Smiling Eyes And Party Horn And Party Hat
Face With Uneven Eyes And Wavy Mouth
Red Face With Tongue Sticking Out With Bead Of Sweat
Blue Face With Clenched Teeth And Icicles
Frowning Face With Question Marks As Eyes
Grinning Face With Letters Ok As Eyes
Frowning Pile Of Poo
Face With Glistening Eyes
Top Of Head With Red Hair
Top Of Head With Curly Hair
Top Of Head With No Hair
Top Of Head With White Hair
Bone
Leg
Foot
Tooth
Lab Coat
Goggles
Hiking Boot
Womans Flat Shoe
Kangaroo
Llama
Peacock
Hippopotamus
Parrot
Raccoon
Broom
Basket
Roll Of Toilet Paper
Lobster
Mosquito
Microbe
Leafy Green
Mango
Moon Cake
Sliced Bagel
Cupcake
Salt Shaker
Red Envelope
Firecracker
Lacrosse Stick And Ball
Softball
Skateboard
Flying Disc
Jigsaw Puzzle Piece
Test Tube
Petri Dish
Dna
Compass
Abacus
Fire Extinguisher
Toolbox
Brick Wall
Magnet
Luggage
Lotion Bottle
Spool Of Thread
Ball Of Yarn
Safety Pin
Teddy Bear
Bar Of Soap
Sponge
Receipt
Nazar
Kurita shrugs that off. The dozen-member team designing i-mode was making something for Japan long before smartphones.
‘Japanese always are too ahead of our time,’ said Kurita, an unpretentious man with a quick smile.
‘I think Galapagos is OK. It’s cool,’ he said, referring to the remote Pacific Island, used in Japan to describe the nation’s insularity.
‘After all, how can Japan hope to win as a global standard?’
‘And so we go ahead with our Galapagos ways in Japan, and people abroad will see it as wonderfully Japanese.’
Some initially opposed making emoji a Unicode standard, according to Yasuo Kida (pictured), a technology expert who was involved in their adoption
Kurita’s invention inspired ‘The Emoji Movie,’ an animated film by Sony Pictures about emojis that live inside the world of a smartphone.
It has yet to be shown in Japan but was modestly popular in the United States.
In 2010, the 12-by-12-pixel designs were adopted as a global standard by the Unicode Consortiums.
That means any phone or operating system that follows the standard will use the same images, making them a universal language.
Some initially opposed making emoji a Unicode standard, according to Yasuo Kida, a technology expert who was involved in their adoption.
Among the arguments: emoji was mere pictures, too infantile and uniquely Japanese. But Kida said companies that saw Japan as an important market won out.
Yuka Kubo, researcher at the University of Tokyo, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Tokyo. Kubo is working on a book about how young Japanese women pioneer innovations such as selfies and use of emojis as art that are ridiculed but become hits
Kurita collected common images including public signs, weather symbols, the zodiac and comic book-style pictures such as a light bulb or a ticking bomb. With simple lines, he made five faces – happy, angry, sad, surprised and perplexed
What began as primitive digital drawings is growing into an elaborate tool for communication with more choices for pictures and animation, such as Apple’s latest Animoji, Kida said.
Unlike Kurita, Kida finds it sad Japanese lose out on opportunities to reap benefits of their innovations on a global scale due to lack of language skills and international influence.’
Yuka Kubo, a researcher at the University of Tokyo, is working on a book about how young Japanese women pioneer innovations such as selfies and use of emojis as art that are ridiculed but become hits.
‘The young women are expressing their rebellion against the adult world, but in a playful way,’ said Kubo.
APPLE INTRODUCES ‘ANIMOJI’
Apple’s new Animoji feature means iPhone X owners will be able to send 3D animated emojis they can control with their face.
According to Apple, the TrueDepth camera captures and analyses over 50 different facial muscle movements.
It will come pre-installed on the iPhone X’s Messenger app, allowing users to record and send Animoji messages that talk with their own voice.
In a demonstration of the new iPhone X, Apple revealed it will come with a feature known as Animoji, which will allow users to communicate as their favourite emojis
The animated characters will be able to smile, frown, or take on other facial expressions.
‘If you were wondering what humanity would do when given access to the most advanced facial recognition technology, here it is,’ joked Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering, as he demonstrated the technology using the popular poop emoji.
These days, Kurita works on a popular live video streaming service called Niconico. He believes such services will become more interactive, building online communities, possibly with artificial intelligence.
Kurita doesn’t feel all that involved with emoji today because they have evolved beyond his original set.
He receives no royalties and is little-known in Japan outside technology circles.
He paid his own air fare to New York last year to see the Museum of Modern Art exhibit, which cited him by name.
Kurita was overcome with emotion.
‘There they were, something I’d been involved with, although I’m neither an artist nor a designer,’ he said.
‘The museum saw value in the design that had the power to change people’s lifestyles.’