An interview with an Apple emoji designer

119

nnate 5 days ago 79 commentsRead Article on shadycharacters.co.uk

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Discussion (79 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

raincole•1 day ago

Off topic: Perhaps it's just me, but I have a pet peeve about emojis in anything formal. Even before LLMs, I instinctively took a repo less seriously when README.md had emojis in every section. And now LLMs have popularized that style, it's the first signal for me to vibe-detect AI repos.

I do use emojis. I love them, actually, but only in message apps.

frollogaston•1 day ago

I don't like to see them anywhere. They were cool for a while back in version 1.0 when there were a few that everyone knew and used in creative ways, before Apple* decided to make so many that you need a search bar. It's kinda like Pokémon. At this point I only get them in text messages from old people.

* yeah I know technically the Unicode Consortium, but Apple pushed it hard

stouset•1 day ago

Emoji (and their predecessor, emoticons) are IMO the greatest new feature for written language that has happened in generations. Eschewing them is certainly a choice you can make, but I personally think it's a poor one.

Authors can now bundle emotional sentiment in text communication. Not being able to do this in the past was usually just an annoyance but could occasionally turn out to be extremely problematic. Countless miscommunications have occurred due to recipients not correctly interpreting an author's tone, and we now have a tool that can help reduce or potentially eliminate those misunderstandings. It's early days, so we're still seeing teething issues: different emoji sets conveying subtly different cues and evolving social norms around their use. But they have incredible potential.

frollogaston•1 day ago

We already had that ;)

Again emoji 1.0 was good. You can convey what you need with a small subset of that even. But even if modern computers were limited to emoji 1.0, I suspect they'd have been equally spammed to the point of losing meaning anyway.

mannykannot•about 5 hours ago

If only Keats or Plath had emoji!

3eb7988a1663•1 day ago

However, the lack of standardization between platforms causes its own miscommunication. Some of the icons between Apple and Google can be interpreted in significantly different ways.

There is also the pistol[0] which depending on the platform is a water gun or revolver.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pistol_emoji

hollerith•1 day ago

And yet you are here, a site completely devoid of emoji.

Auracle•1 day ago

You know, I would actually use little Pokemon sprite emojis, unlike the real thing.

Affric•1 day ago

Emoji are fun to use because they make written communication more human… corporations or LLMs using them just comes off as insincere.

ErigmolCt•about 20 hours ago

Emoji work well when they feel like a tiny bit of personality leaking through the text

zzo38computer•about 12 hours ago

I do not use emoji and I do not have (and do not want) colourful emoji on my computer (emoji as ordinary text characters would be acceptable for the purpose of displaying texts that have emoji, but I don't really need to that much, even if the texts have them, so I can do without that, too). The reason does not have to do with AI; I think that things can rarely be explained better with emoji, and is usually better to explain by text, and sometimes also diagrams will help (for computer programs, having good documentation is very helpful). (I also don't like Unicode.)

bombcar•1 day ago

I only like emojis that HN doesn't yet filter.

Join me! 𓂺

ErigmolCt•about 20 hours ago

Emoji themselves aren't the problem. It's more that context changes the meaning completely

geophph•1 day ago

Not just you!

thenthenthen•1 day ago

Or SSID’s

9dev•1 day ago

> We mapped almost 1:1 to SoftBank’s set, though Apple chose to omit a few of the more risqué ones.

Which are these risqué emojis mentioned here? I don't think I have ever seen any that are even slightly graphic, which is probably why all the emoji slang conventions have spread like fire (Aubergine, Peach, etc.)

cryzinger•1 day ago

I was going to say that the love hotel emoji was the only one I could think of, but in the process of trying to find the emojipedia link (https://emojipedia.org/love-hotel) I found a Reddit thread that leads to a now-defunct blog post:

12 years ago - Apple removes beer, wine, love hotel, and other emojis from insertion palette in Messages app https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/2qqaya/apple_removes...

The blog it links to is dead, so here's an archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20150312182931/http://blog.getem...

edm0nd•1 day ago

Its kinda odd how a lot of the major tech companies have self censored emojis like they are some savior of the planet for doing so.

For example the gun emoji by turning it into a water pistol instead of a real looking firearm handgun lol.

WOW THEY SURE CAUSED COUNTLESS LIVES TO BE SAVED W THAT ONE SINGLE MOVE!

pc86•1 day ago

It's virtue signaling - nonsense from the same people who unironically say things like "lived experience" and "emotional labor." It shows they're part of a particular group, so they're Good, and if you're not, you're Bad.

mft_•about 22 hours ago

I disagree - I think it might be more about predictable-hassle-avoidance.

The media landscape is all about creating sensation, trying to find an edge from something a politician said or a corporation did to generate a headline and some clicks. And as we know, companies like Apple are heavily scrutinised because they’re even better at driving clicks.

So I think Apple is incentivised to look for things which in a reasonable world wouldn’t even register, but which might cause some minor sensation they’d have to deal with, and snuff out that risk beforehand.

Cider9986•1 day ago

Stickers are for you. Plenty of uncensored content and as soon as you send one from one of your packs, the recipient can start using them anywhere as well.

https://signalstickers.org/

AngryData•1 day ago

It is free PR so corporations lap that kind of thing up.

pimlottc•1 day ago

That's a good question. Comparing the Softbank emoji from June 2008 [0] and the initial batch of Apple emoji that shipping in iPhone OS 2.2 (Nov 2008) [1], it doesn't look like there are any missing at all, it's a perfect 1:1 mapping.

0: https://emojipedia.org/softbank/2008

1: https://emojipedia.org/apple/iphone-os-2.2

frollogaston•1 day ago

Maybe edit rather than omit? Apple changed the people kissing with actual lip contact, the 1910s-looking cancan dancers, and the stink lines on the poop.

stringfood•1 day ago

long eggplant and a smaller Pinching Hand emoji were probably the first to go

holistio•1 day ago

There is still no walnut emoji. Blonde-haired, black-skinned pregnant man? Yes. Walnut? No.

wpm•1 day ago

Be the petty, small change you wish to see in the world: https://joypixels.com/blog/how-to-submit-an-emoji-to-unicode

holistio•1 day ago

I will be. Thanks.

By the way, Walnut Creek is less than 100 miles from Cupertino.

I love walnuts.

CGMthrowaway•1 day ago

I'll bet you could find a place named after most any nut within 100 miles of Cupertino.

Jtarii•1 day ago

Gotta love websites that hijack basic browser functions, in this case forcing smooth scroll on.

embedding-shape•1 day ago

Seems to be some sort of design agency or similar, it's basically internet-law at this point that those always fuck with the scroll movements of your browser, for some reason.

frollogaston•1 day ago

Yeah I felt that and left so fast, forget that

hollerith•1 day ago

Gotta love browsers that let websites hijack basic browser functions.

ErigmolCt•about 19 hours ago

Also "petty, small change" is exactly the right scale for a walnut emoji campaign

hbn•1 day ago

I love the pregnant man emoji, I use it all the time after a big meal

asdff•1 day ago

No more gun emoji. Humanity could not be trusted with the cartoon revolver emoji. Take your squirtgun, citizen.

j1000•1 day ago

Also no thief emoji or pirate emoji. Can someone enlighten me why we don't have it?

dagmx•1 day ago

Simply because nobody has successfully pitched the Unicode group to add one.

Anyone can pitch new emoji, they just have to go through the fairly easy but strict formal process.

blanched•1 day ago

Alex Schmidt, a humor writer (formerly of Cracked and others) did this process for the bison emoji. I enjoyed his “miniseries” about it: https://www.bisonemojipodcast.com/

hbn•1 day ago

I was looking for a pirate emoji like 5 minutes ago. I'm sure it's not the first time but I'm super surprised that still isn't in there. Seems so obvious.

frollogaston•1 day ago

Well there's a pirate flag

wvbdmp•1 day ago

What’s next, a cowboy emoji? A ninja emoji? But seriously, as much as I like emojis, I kind of feel like they should stick to emotions. Maybe other intangible things. They’re hard to convey verbally (and succinctly), simple concrete nouns are good for a bit of fun and for UI icons, but really not very useful if we’re being honest. Unless you’re texting with a lizard, or my lazy elementary-school niece who shouldn’t really have a phone anyway…

customguy•1 day ago

If we add 26 more emojis, one for each letter, we could use them to spell out all sorts of words - emotions, objects, anything!

holistio•1 day ago

Or you're texting with people whose native language uses a logographic system.

helterskelter•1 day ago

We got the mpreg emoji instead of a chainsaw, which makes me feel like we need an emoji lobbying group for things like sex, drugs, sawed-off shotguns and jury nullification.

ErigmolCt•about 19 hours ago

Representation emojis and object emojis are solving different problems

carrozo•1 day ago

still no Guillotine Emoji either, although not for a lack of trying.

https://www.carrozo.com/guillotine-emoji

joshmn•1 day ago

Been waiting for seahorse myself.

ollien•1 day ago

If the author is reading this, the hyperlink to the book in the first paragraph is broken. Looks like it's attempting to direct you to an absolute url that was meant to be relative.

    <a href="https://books/face-with-tears-of-joy">

amelius•2 days ago

In case anyone is actually interested in the emoji:

https://emojipedia.org/apple

Aissen•1 day ago

More specifically, it was this set: https://emojipedia.org/apple/iphone-os-2.2

Interesting tidbit:

> Emoji support required iPhone OS 2.2 and a SoftBank SIM card.

TazeTSchnitzel•1 day ago

These are very nostalgic. The way Apple's emoji look has subtly changed since then.

amelius•1 day ago

To be honest, the images look like things I've seen a hundred times over in comic books and not much more original than GenAI.

reaperducer•1 day ago

not much more original than GenAI.

What exactly do you think the "GenAI" trained on?

throawayonthe•1 day ago

is that not sorta the point? i don't get the genai reference

aforty•1 day ago

So cool to get the background story on this. I remember adding the Japanese keyboard here in the US just so I could get access to emojis.

thenthenthen•1 day ago

Modifying the Universal: a seminal piece on emoji’s and possibly why/how from a humanities perspective: https://youtu.be/ZP2bQ_4Q7DY?si=TIl4Zhs2X2ZgBJfY

ErigmolCt•about 20 hours ago

Cultural impact often comes from boring product work done carefully

dwflanagan•1 day ago

I just finished Keith Houston's previous book _Empire of the Sum_, a history of calculators, I'll be reading this next.

Tepix•2 days ago

Are the emojis on Apple (macOS, iOS etc) vector graphics these days?

LoganDark•1 day ago

They are not. They are perhaps higher resolution than they once were, but still raster:

https://logandark.net/files/328S6690-9Q368809-16843Q53-RR2SN...

NoSalt•2 days ago

Why does that site feel like I am reading typed text on paper?

CGMthrowaway•1 day ago

The letters are super fuzzy (a ton of anti-aliasing, even on the bottoms of the letters where it's not needed)

CharlesW•1 day ago

It's a combination of the layout, the typeface (https://monokrom.no/fonts/satyr), and the thoughtful typography.

alnwlsn•1 day ago

Serif font?

reaperducer•1 day ago

Did you print it out?

NoSalt•1 day ago

LOL

ebbi•1 day ago

> and then through to Steve Jobs for final approval

I miss Steve Jobs