When the very first set of emoji was designed by Japanese engineer Shigetaku Kurita in the 1990s, pixel-y dots within a 12-by-12 dot grid were about the entirety of what could be conveyed in emoji ...

Can you believe that the first emoji was only created in the late 1990s? Before this, we could use emoticons, which were just a representation of a face using the keys on a keyboard. In only around 30 ...

Can you imagine a world where you text without emojis? Here’s how it all started. Japanese characters, or "kanji," are largely based on Chinese ideograms, whose writing system is already highly ...

As the designer of the first emoji for cellphones, Shigetaka Kurita periodically fields requests that he expand the lexicon of the pictogram-like characters. Ranging from symbols for food items like a ...

The Unicode Emoji Subcommittee reviews new submissions. Emoji, the silly little pictorials that fill digital communication, are a fun way to deliver a message for many people. But for those who want ...