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How can I get my idea turned into an emoji?
You’ll need to submit it to the Unicode Consortium, which begins accepting proposals again on April 2.
What is the Unicode Consortium?
A non-profit that manages Unicode, a standardized group of letters and characters representing all of the world’s major languages, as well as common symbols and emojis. Having a technical standard everyone agrees to makes typed characters work on any software or device.
Why can’t I see some emojis?
Try updating your device! Even when Unicode approves new emojis (like the ones above, which were released in September), it’s up to the companies that make your operating system to adopt them. It’s why some people reading this will see 🍋🟩 as a lime, but others will see it as a lemon next to a green square. Sometimes apps and browsers also need to update their standards for emojis to appear properly.
Why would it show up as two emojis?
A lot of new emojis actually aren’t totally new characters. They are actually two emojis that use something called a zero-width joiner, an invisible character that combines them into one. Apart from the lime, other examples are the new phoenix emoji (which combines the bird and fire emojis) and the new shaking head emojis (which combine a regular smiley face with an arrow emoji).
What kind of ideas does the Unicode Consortium accept?
There is a full guide, but the short version is that your idea needs to be different enough from emojis that already exist, but not so specific that no one will use it. Also, your proposal can’t be for an emoji that has been rejected within the last two years.