World Emoji Day : 10 Really Cool Things About Emoji

1. Emojis were first developed by Shigetaka Kurita for cell phones in 1999

2. World Emoji Day takes place on July 17 for a totally logical reason : The “calendar” emoji — a minimized version of Apple’s iCal icon for both its desktop and mobile app — shows the default date of July 17.

3. Every new technology on social media is first embraced by the younger generation but the cultural obsession with visual communication right now transcends generations — octogenarians use poop emojis. ??

4. As of Emoji 11.0 there are 2,823 emojis approved by Unicode

5. The word emoji, which comes from the Japanese e (“picture”) + moji (“character”) 

6. ????❤? are the top Emoji across Facebook and Messenger.

7. People are using the ❤ emoji twice as much as they did last year on Facebook.

8. All this adds up to a total of 6 billion emoticons  flying around the world every day on mobile messaging apps.

9. More than 90% of social networking users communicate through these symbols

10. The Oxford Dictionary named the “Face with Tears of Joy” ? emoji the Word of the Year 2015.

On the occasion of World Emoji Day which falls on 17 July, I was commissioned by VR Bengaluru to create an Emoji-themed art installation. In addition, our company Laboratory Of Creativity in association with VR Bengaluru set up an Emoji  Creation Station exclusively for kids on 14 and 15 July. Did people go bonkers when they spotted a whole family of emoji? See it for yourself in the videos!!

Happy World Emoji Day!!???❤