LOS ANGELES — Apple offered a sneak peek at new emojis that will be released in the fall on its mobile devices.

The new characters include a woman with wearing a headscarf, a woman breastfeeding and a bearded man, along with animals and mythical creatures like T-Rex, Zebra, Zombie and Elf .

Emojis are a popular way to jazz up text messages with graphics to, as Apple says, "describe situations" and "make any message more fun." The new emoji characters will be seen in IOS 11, the fall update to the mobile operating system that powers iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices. The emojis can also be used on the Apple Watch and Mac computers.

The World Emoji Day is a marketing gimmick, but in the slow days of the summer, it gives many brands and institutions a reason for posting and having celebrations.

The Empire State Building in NY, today, for instance, is adorned in emoji yellow, The Museum of Modern Art in New York is showing off the original set of 176 emoji created by Japan's NTT DOCOMO for cell phones in 1999, McDonald's has an emoji game in restaurants and ICYMI, a new film, "The Emoji Movie," is opening in theaters at the end of the month.