It is the age of emoji, and we have reached a stage where these characters have started to even replace language. The set of characters which once conveyed just a few basic emotions through a happy face, fuming face, or a lip-down sad face, now cover a range of human emotions, food, professions, and everyday objects. So much so, that these emojis now even include gender-specific characters, and those of varying skin tones to promote the message of inclusiveness. Taking the message to the next level, there's a whole new set of emojis coming our way. Unicode, the organisation that standardises these characters for various mobile platforms, released its final list of 2017 emojis on Monday.
There are 69 emoji (239 if you consider gender and skin tone variations) inspired from a wide range of topics—there is a broccoli, a cricket, a Tyrannosaurus rex, mermaids, and even mermen. Considering the wide spectrum of human emotions, and how it often gets difficult to put those into words, the new set of emojis has some interesting additions. For instance, there is a shocked face with an exploding head, a vomiting emoji face, and a starry eyed face, among others. Breaking conventions, and sending across a strong message, the new set of emojis also includes a woman in a hijab, and a breastfeeding woman.
Interestingly, this year, the list includes a few fantasy characters, each with a male and female variation—magician, zombie, elf, vampire, and fairy.
A complete list of the new emojis, scheduled for release in June, has been published on the emojipedia website which documents changes to emojis= symbols and their meanings. According to emojipedia, the images shown have been created to show how new emojis will appear on iOS. These aren't final designs and might look different on various mobile platforms.
