The ever-expanding index of images has elevated the way we communicate. But, behind the heart eyes and dancing ladies, it takes a lot to bring them to life

In recent years, sending each other a preponderance of peaches and an avalanche of aubergines – plus a smattering of smiley faces, hearts and pizza slices along the way – has become one of the key ways we converse. Emojis have become ingrained in our lives, exploding from a quirky set of 176 pictures on Japanese mobile phones back in the 1990s to one of the main methods of communication today, peppering our missives on WhatsApp, Twitter and via text messages. Andy Murray summed up the stresses and joys of his wedding day solely in emojis in 2015, while the European commission has deployed emojis when surveying users about the future of Europe.

Andy Murray (@andy_murray) 🌞☔😂👔💅💇😂👰😂🚗💒💃👫🙏💍💏👏📝🎹📷🎥🚗🍷🍴🎂🎊🎉👯🎶🎤🍹🍻🍷🍺🍩🍦🍷🍹🍸🍺🌙❤💕😘💤💤💤💤💤💤💤

“People can say: ‘They’re little pictures – why bother?’ But people use emoji so regularly now,” says Selina Jeanne Sutton, a PhD student at Northumbria University who has investigated how emojis are designed. “They’re a pervasive part of people’s linguistic repertoire.” They’re used increasingly regularly to augment and replace the written word. An estimated 84% of smartphone users send each other emojis, with women using the small pictorial missives more than men.

“Emoji enable us to encapsulate the nonverbal part of our face-to-face conversations in our digital communication,” explains emoji expert Keith Broni, who “translates” emojis for companies looking to use them in marketing campaigns. The most popular emoji remains the face with tears of joy, closely followed by variations that somehow incorporate hearts – indicating we’re a supportive, loving bunch.

But the corpus of emojis isn’t set in stone. Every year new ones are added to our keyboards, ready to be used in the wild. The latest crop that could make their way on to our smartphones in 2019 were unveiled last month – and will be finalised later this month. They include the mundane parts of life – briefs, butter and ballet shoes – as well as more socially progressive proposals. Among the designs put up for consideration by Apple are an ear adorned with a hearing aid, an emoji of a deaf person, and prosthetic arms and legs.

They’ll not be voted for by the public; the successful candidates will be decided upon by a subcommittee at Unicode, the organisation that oversees the administration and creation of the symbols, at a meeting at their offices in Mountain View, California. Members of the committee include large Silicon Valley tech companies, the biggest smartphone manufacturers, and a representative from the government of Oman to represent the interests of the Middle East and the Arabic language. But the public can be involved in other ways.

Justin Bai prefers the Apple version of his sandwich emoji. 'The Microsoft one looks pretty vegetarian,' he says

“The beautiful thing about emoji is anyone can propose one,” says Jennifer 8. Lee, a former journalist who is now a member of Unicode’s emoji subcommittee. They just have to compile a proposal document to a standard template set out by Unicode. Lee would know: she managed to get the dumpling emoji included in the international keyboard after a lobbying campaign and a Kickstarter that raised $12,478, and helped nurse a proposal to include a hijab emoji through to completion to improve representation of the half-billion women who wear it worldwide.

Among those who have also seen their proposals pop on to phones is Justin Bai, a linguistics student at Brown University in the US. Two years ago, Bai met Lee at Emojicon, a conference dedicated to the emoji. She encouraged him to put forward ideas; he elected to take up the cause of the humble sandwich. “We picked it because it was a common thing,” says Bai. “There are sandwiches of all types across the world. The fact there wasn’t a sandwich emoji seemed to us to be lacking.”

But while it may seem obvious to include one of the world’s most commonly consumed foodstuffs, it’s not as simple as that.

The Unicode Consortium, which oversees the introduction of new emojis, considers a number of factors for inclusion. “We look at how visually distinctive the item is, how in demand it is, and does it have longevity,” says Lee. The consortium also considers whether proposals are appropriate for a variety of cultures: in 2016, a proposal for a sauna emoji tabled by the Finnish government was approved on condition that the modesty of the naked sauna users was preserved with a towel.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The proposed garlic emoji: hummus still has no place in the lexicon. Photograph: Courtesy of unicode.org

Emojis are a visual language, so proposals need to look visually appealing or distinctive. Hummus has yet to be captured in emoji form, despite its popularity as a staple food in the Middle East (and the fridges of British supermarkets). “It’s beige, essentially,” Lee says. Proposals for a sewing needle to be included have likewise been rejected – despite Lee’s protestations – because it’s seen as a bit bland.

Zeitgeist-riding emojis are often rejected because they may prove to be short-lived: both drones and VR headsets have been turned down. “I remember Mark Davis, the founder of Unicode, said: ‘Once it’s an emoji, it’s always an emoji,’” explains Bai.

The presence of outmoded past technologies such as the floppy disk and fax machine on emoji keyboards in 2018 is an aberration, says Lee, blaming “a legacy regime” on the Unicode subcommittee. “They were passed before it was clear how popular emoji were going to be.”

Today the subcommittee’s considerations are carefully scrutinised to make sure they don’t offend a nation or an entire subsection of society. The inclusion this year of so many images that represent the disabled is a corrective tonic to years of underrepresentation. Getting those emojis on to the longlist has proven nowhere near as contentious as getting gun emojis approved, however: the once-realistic pistol emoji has been rendered more toy-like after complaints that it glorified violence, while the subcommittee pulled the rifle from its 2016 list of emoji candidates after Apple raised concerns that it could be used to spread gun violence.

Such decisions matter because Unicode only approves between 50 and 70 emojis every year. “It’s less important if you’re in the UK or the US,” says Lee, “because we’ve got fancy, high-end phones – but if you have a $15 Android phone in Uganda, the drain on resources is a much bigger deal.” Rendering and storing a large amount of emojis can sap the memory of weaker-powered phones.

As a result, the proposal document asks for evidence that any proposed emojis are more popular than pre-existing emojis – based on Google search results. For the sandwich emoji, Bai was asked to show evidence of the sandwich’s popularity compared to the likes of hot dogs. In all, writing the proposal took five or six hours. But that was only the first step: months of lobbying, debate and rewriting to meet the demands of the emoji subcommittee followed. Bai’s labour was richly rewarded: the sandwich joined the emoji pantheon around a year and a half after he first submitted his proposal.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The proposed guide dog emoji. Photograph: Courtesy of unicode.org

“I was really excited,” he says. “It was really astonishing to see something I worked on on the phones of all these people.” (Each service using emojis can tweak the design approved by the Unicode Consortium, within reason, to best fit in with the aesthetic on their devices or apps. For the record, Bai prefers the Apple version of his sandwich emoji: “The Microsoft one looks pretty vegetarian,” he says. He has also championed the pretzel to its rightful place on our phones.)

For those with an itchy finger and a yearning for a symbol that isn’t in their current keyboard, Bai’s advice is to take the plunge. All it takes is completing a form – the details of which are on the Unicode website – and emailing it to the subcommittee. Act fast, though: the emoji approval process moves slowly. And bear in mind you’ll be up against some stiff competition. “I actually have a third proposal in the works,” admits Bai. Having promoted the pretzel and supported the sandwich, he’ll be flying the flag for the fly next.

But the hard work isn’t worth it for some. “Anyone can make a proposal, but the process is relatively complicated, so I’m not sure everyone goes through that,” says Sutton. “Starting more of a dialogue with end users about which emoji are important to them and why would be a start.”

Once you’re on the board, you have to be made of stern stuff. As some of the supporters of the 2019 longlist of emojis will soon find out, being a board member involves making difficult decisions and saying no to the passion projects of dedicated amateurs, billion-dollar corporations and even governments – such as telling Finland it needs to put some clothes on.